


Kaiju, Jaeger, Doctor, Traitor

by orphan



Series: Frankenstein and the Newt [6]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Established Relationship, Kaiju Newton Geiszler, Multi, Plot, Polyamory, Post-Kaiju War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:01:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5809198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan/pseuds/orphan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After years of futile efforts trying to model and predict the k-virus outbreaks in the same way he could predict the daikaiju, Hermann finally manages to figure out where he was going wrong. Now his whole family has to pay the price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. “Nowadays, there’s always an outbreak.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to formally apologize to anyone working in any field related to epidemiology, virology, or, like. Science. Just apologies to science as a generic entity, really.
> 
> Also, STOP THE PRESSES because omg oodlesodoodles drew some [amazing amazing fanart of Newt](http://oodlesodoodles.tumblr.com/post/137776256624/i-drew-newt-from-frankenstein-and-the-newt-by) for this series and I am in love. ❤
> 
> [ _Monster misbehaving, planet’s needing saving, situation’s grave and I’ll form the head_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMgsAD3D948).

That’s the thing about the bond. It means that, when the Blue finally hits the fan, neither of them has to say a word.

It’s an outbreak in Guìyáng, K3L6. This one’s virulent, airborne, can jump through pigs and bats as well as humans. Maybe other species, Newton isn’t sure, is still running tests, even as red-faced arseholes from EBERL keep bursting into K-Lab, bringing news and samples and dragging Hermann away from his work to do translation just because everyone on the fucking planet is apparently too lazy to learn some fucking sign language, _Jesus_.

Hermann’s not even sure anymore who those thoughts belong to. Maybe both of them.

He, meanwhile, is looking at numbers. Trying to find the Breach. They’ve helicoptered in teams from Hong Kong, have blasted the whole area in h-fields, but nothing’s coming back on their readings. The small Breaches are hard to find, and it’s possible that—with bats as a vector—the index case was miles away, but…

But.

But there are Newt’s suspicions, too, bubbling hot and heady. It’s not until one of the EBERL oxygen thieves comes in, carrying a biohazard case, shouting, “Doctor! Doctor! You need to see this. We’ve got… I think it was a chicken!” that things start getting messy.

K3L6 only does mammals.

The EBERL officer is trying to get a look in over Newt’s broad shoulders, trying to get a handle on his work, when Hermann forcibly ejects him from the lab. They don’t need EBERL. They’re K-Lab. It might look like they’re alone but, in truth, somewhere buried under Hong Kong, K2 is an explosion of activity, dozens of hand-picked people working tirelessly on the sort of work the PPDC has grown too lazy or complacent or downright corrupt to fund.

Even still, it’s Newt and Newt alone who makes the connection. In a way, Hermann is relieved. They’re already targets, were going to figure this out eventually. He’s just spent the last few years hoping desperately it wouldn’t be _now_.

Today, it’s now.

They stop work. Both of them. There’s no need to continue, not any more. Instead, they each sit at their respective laptops, each start typing in the same document. Their minds are so close they may as well be one entity in two bodies; one mind controlling six hands, controlling two narratives that intertwine in the pages of an badly-formatted PPDC report.

There’s clipart in that report. Clipart and lies.

* * *

Marshal Hansen is surprised when Hermann hands over the tablet.

“Already? We’re still getting casualty reports.”

Hermann nods, tightly. “Yes,” he says. “We’ve done all we can do from here. Hence…” he gestures towards the tablet with his head.

“I… see,” says Hansen, eyes narrowing.

“Marshal?” Herman clenches his fingers around the head of his cane, tries not to feel the shaking. “On a more… personal note, I will require some leave. Effective immediately.”

Hansen’s eyebrows go up. “You can’t be serious. There’s a bloody outbreak—”

“With all due respect, Marshal,” Hermann says, “nowadays, there’s always an outbreak.” Something new every month, the death toll rising into the millions. It’s like the daikaiju, all over again, except this there won’t be any giant robots to save them. “And I’ve had… news. My uncle Vidkun has passed away. I’m required back in Courland. To attend matters.” Hermann’s practiced this line in his head a thousand times. He’d hoped he’d never have to use it.

He can’t meet Hansen’s eyes in the subsequent silence; long and awful as it is. Then:

“Fine. And Newt?”

Hermann tries not to wince. “We’ve made arrangements. Discreet.”

There’s a huff. Staring at the wall as he is, it takes Hermann a moment to realize it’s a laugh. “Now there’s a word I don’t associate with Newt.” A pause, and when Hermann dares look, the Marshal is smiling, heavy and humorless. “Alright,” he says. “Leave granted. But I expect your phones to stay on, understood?”

“Understood,” says Hermann. “Thank you, sir.” He feels some of the tension seep from his aching joints. Some of it.

* * *

When he gets back to their dorm, Newt’s already packed a suitcase. He hands it to Hermann, and they share a kiss and no words. What is there left to say? Hermann takes the suitcase, which follows behind him on automated wheels as he walks out of the Shatterdome alone. Newt will come later, via the water. Everything according to a plan they laid out months ago.

There’s a taxi waiting at the entrance to the Shatterdome. Hermann didn’t call it, but the driver hops out to help load the suitcase into the boot. Hermann makes smalltalk with the man and tries not to look at the tattoo on the inside of his wrist. A stylized vulture in mid-flight, five tears spilling from its wings.

“Where to?” the driver asks, as Hermann slides into the backseat.

“Hong Kong international.” Hermann thickens his accent as he says it. His German accent. _Always assume you are being watched._ “I have to return to Courland. A death in the family.”

“Sorry to hear that,” the driver says. His eyes meet Hermann’s in the rear-view mirror, dark and piercing.

They pick up their first tail just after the Tsing Ma Bridge. A black sedan, unmarked and conspicuous. Hermann closes his eyes, tries to steady his breathing. Tries not to hear the pop of the glove compartment or the sound of the driver, loading a clip into a gun.

“Are you traveling alone?”

One breath in. One breath out.

“No,” Hermann says. “My partner is coming also. By sea.”

“Good to hear it,” is the reply. “No one should do these things alone.”

“Oh,” says Hermann. “I think this will definitely be a family affair.”

The second tail joins them past the bridge, at Tai Yam Teng. Two motorcycles this time, two people riding apiece. They stay behind the sedan, weaving in and out between the traffic.

The taxi pulls off at the Tung Chung interchange, heading west down Yu Tung Road. The sedan follows, as do the motorcycles. Hermann focuses on his breath, and tries to be brave.

The exchange happens on a backroad, somewhere Hermann doesn’t even really know. Somewhere up in Mok Ka, he thinks, judging from the trees and huge statue of Buddha, looming above them. The taxi stops, and so does the sedan. The driver takes his gun, and gets out, and then the shooting starts. Hermann slides down low in his seat, eyes closed and hands fisted, feeling very small and very cowardly. Feeling the reassuring pulse from Newt, currently swimming in the bay, en route to his own pickup.

“ _Let them do their job, dude. I know it sucks.”_

They all have their jobs, in this terrible, awful war.

Eventually, the shooting ends. The shooting ends, and footsteps approach the taxi, and for one moment, just one moment, Hermann’s heart stops.

Then the back door opens. The opener isn’t Hermann’s driver. It’s a woman with a half-shaved head and a tattoo of a vulture on the inside of her wrist. Her vulture has no tears, and Hermann wonders if it will, come next week.

“Doctor Gottlieb,” the woman says. “Please come with me.”

He does so, trying not to look at the bodies or the blood or the man dressed in slacks and a sweatervest who replaces him in the taxi. The man with the passport for Hermann Gottlieb and the planet ticket to RIX.

Instead, Hermann is handed a motorcycle helmet and a bulletproof vest and motorcycle jacket, and he puts all of them on. Then he gets onto the back of a bike, and returns to Hong Kong.

* * *

Newt makes it to K2 twenty minutes after Hermann does, and they collapse against each other in the middle of the lab.

There are no words, only an endless, mindless grief. Themselves, and the dozens of staff around them. All hand-picked, all loyal and brave and devoted to one thing and one thing only: the preservation of Earth.

Eventually, Hermann manages to stand, supported by Newt’s strong and scaled arms. He looks out at the faces looking back at him, anxious and determined, all at once. It occurs to him, in this moment, that they want him to make a speech.

“ _We’ll do it together,”_ Newt tells him.

So they do.

* * *

“How bad is it?”

Two hours later. It’s Hermann and Newt and Hannibal Chau and Marshal Hansen. Hansen is out of uniform, wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt so old it has multiple holes and no surviving hems. It also has a Bintang logo on the front and a pair of sunglasses clipped on the collar. The outfit makes Hansen look… small. Like a tourist. Which is entirely the point.

Hermann shares a look with Newt. “Bad, sir,” he says. “Very bad.”

“Tell me.”

“The outbreak in Guìyáng,” Hermann begins, “we couldn’t find evidence of a breach. K3L6, it’s carried by bats. We think perhaps the index case is outside the city, somewhere remote we’d never find.” Hermann swallows, thick and dry. He feels Newt’s hand curl into his. “EBERL delivered the sample that confirmed… a suspicion we’ve had for a while. A chicken.” Hermann pauses. “Sir, K3L6… it doesn’t manifest in birds.”

“Jesus Christ.” They’re outside the Shatterdome, on K2 turf. No need for Hansen to pretend to be strong, to pretend to be the Marshal, and so he doesn’t. Just collapses against a desk, hand against his brow. “Tell me… tell me it jumped. Tell me it was natural.” But he knows it wasn’t. None of them would be here if it were.

“Sir, the pigeon was carrying K3D2,” Hermann says.

“From the outbreak in Lima?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus. Fuck me, I…” He trails off.

“We think…” Hermann glances at Newt, glances at Hannibal, scowling at them from the corner. Hermann swallows, starts again: “We think the K3L6 was Anteverse in origin, we have people still searching for a Breach.”

“And the… the other strain? Is this… a new Double Event?” And, god. What kind of world do they live in when that option is the hopeful one?

Hermann takes a shaky breath, feels Newt’s big claw against his back. Reassuring. “The Anteverse has never hit us with the same strain twice, and we have a spectrum vaccine for the K3 line. Doctor Geiszler’s team think the fact we’re still seeing A-origin variation is a sign our enemies are attempting to”—a murmur of agitated technobabble from Newt—“test the robustness of that vaccine. I… Sorry, sir, this isn’t my area of expertise. Doctor Geiszler can provide a more accurate—”

Hansen holds up one hand. “Thank you,” he says. “Stick with the small words for now. I’m not sure I known enough HKSL to keep up with a technical breakdown. Sorry, Newt.”

“It’s okay,” Newt signs. “I’m not sure I do, either.”

“I’d ask you to put it in your report,” Hansen says, “but, well…” His face crumples again, disgust and fury etching out every decade of age.

Hermann continues:

“We think the second strain was chosen as another K3-line variant due to the similar symptoms and similar response to the vaccine. Essentially, once we’d identified the initial outbreak and moved in response teams, I believe it was hoped we wouldn’t be looking for a second outbreak. And, honestly sir? If we hadn’t found the bird, we never would have.” A pause, then: “We… haven’t. In the past.”

“Jesus. How… how many…?”

“We’re still looking, going over… over remains. We’ve identified at least six so far, going back at least eighteen months. Same pattern every time; a second outbreak buried in a first, one A-origin, one…” Hermann swallows. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. Saying it out loud makes it real, and… and he doesn’t want this to be real. “Sir, the second outbreaks, we believe they’re being engineered by someone on Earth.”

Marshal Hansen _roars_. Takes his arms and sweeps them across the desk he’s been leaning against, sending china and gold and crystal smashing to the floor. At least something on the desk was kaiju in origin, the room flooded by the sharp chemical bite of acid and ammonia as its container shatters and its contents ooze free. Hannibal raises a single eyebrow, but otherwise does nothing.

“ _Why_?” Hansen is saying. “Why? This bloody war… After everything that’s happened, after everyone we’ve lost… _Why_?”

“ _I’m going to tell him.”_

“Newton…” Hermann turns, finds six bright eyes looking back.

“ _I… Dude. We would’ve told Stacker, right? And Stacker…”_ A pause, a lot of jumbled memories, fleeing like startled rabbits. “ _I want to trust him.”_

“So do I.” It’s why Hansen’s here. He’d figured out Hermann’s code. Hermann has no uncle Vikun, of course, but Hansen’s military. He’d know of Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi collaborator so infamous his name became synonymous with traitor. And Courland, the location for the German evacuation known as Operation Hannibal.

(They’d argued a lot over that last choice in particular. Hermann still doesn’t like it, for obvious reasons, but hadn’t been able to come up with something better. He does mathematics, not spy novels.)

He must be giving Newt too many intense looks, because Hannibal says, “This is war, boys. I’ve lost three people in the last six hours. The wrong words to the wrong people, and I start losing more.”

Hansen must sense the shift in mood, because he’s straightened. Schooled the despair out of his features. He’s the Marshal again, now. The Marshal in cargo shorts, but still the Marshal. “Hermann?” he asks.

Hermann sighs. “Marshal Hansen, sir… Doctor Geiszler and I, we haven’t exactly been… honest. With you.”

This gets a wry quirk of Hansen’s lip. “No, really? Was this before or after you started poaching my best people into your secret illegal triad-funded lab?”

Hannibal just rolls his eyes, apparently deciding to save the “legitimate businessman” speech for another day.

“Before, sir,” says Hermann, because it’s the truth. “It’s… It’s part of the reason why we started.”

Newt steps forward. “The truth is…” He shares a glance with Hermann. “Sir, I know how to stabilize the k-virus. I’ve, um. I’ve always known. It’s how Herms and I are, you know. Not dead.”

Hermann can tell the exact moment the Marshal processes this, because his face goes dead blank. His voice cold as he says, “Newt. People are dying. People have died.”

The sharp lurch of guilt, of self-recrimination, from Newt makes Hermann’s heart ache.

“I know!” Newt lunges half a step forward, hands working furiously. “I know! And it’s… it’s not like we’ve been doing nothing! The stabilization… I mean, we call it that but it’s more complicated. That’s why— I mean, I… the version I used on myself. The Phase I. It, well. I didn’t die. But…” He gestures to himself. “Ended up the full kaiju. But for Herms… for Herms, I figured out what I did wrong. And his… Phase II. Stabilization, but equilibrium, too, and—”

Hansen holds up his hands. “Wait,” he says. “Newton, wait. Slow down. Are you… are you telling me…” He turns to Hermann. “You’re kaiju?”

Hermann winces. “Not… exactly,” he says, even as Newt lurches forward with a, “No! No, he’s human. Well, I mean. Mostly. Like, 99% human. If you took a hair sample, blood, saliva. You’d just get human DNA. But—”

“I’m a genetic chimera,” Hermann says, because Newt’s signing is getting harder and harder to read, his brains and hands outpacing the ability of the human eye to follow gestures. “If you took the right biopsy from the right place, you’d get kaiju tissue.”

“It’s mostly just dermal,” Newt adds. “Just some minor changes in his skin—”

“The tattoos,” Hansen guesses. “It’s why you…”

“I, um. I glow in the dark,” Hermann says, trying not to feel the blush creeping up his cheeks. “The luminescence is harder to notice. Under the color.”

“The strains of the k-virus,” Newt adds, “they’re _species_. I mean, well. Obviously they are. But, uh, I mean… the strain of k-virus corresponds to the body plan and function of the resulting converted kaiju. The K1 strains, that’s us”—he gestures between himself and Hermann—“we’re, well. Um. Dominator types. Built to infiltrate human settlements, use the neural parasite on key targets. Drag them into the hive mind, that sort of thing. We’re gen ones, the first trials. Imperfect, I guess. Which, yay for Earth.” He waves his big arms, a half-hearted imitation of an excited schoolgirl.

“And the other strains?”

“We don’t really know,” Newt admits. “Because, well. They’ve never stabilized. We can take some guesses. K2s seem to be based off Leatherback, so we think they’re shock troops. The K6s have a high correlation with Otachi so maybe they fly or spit acid or both. The K8s—”

Hansen holds up a hand. “Enough. I get the idea.” Newt will go on all day if they let him, and this isn’t what they’re here for.

“The point,” Hermann says, “is that the stabilization process Doctor Geiszler used for me is tailored both to the specific k-virus strain we were infected by, and to my own genetic makeup.”

“We can’t mass produce it,” Newt adds. “I… It wouldn’t help in an outbreak. We’re working on something that will… a Phase-III, even. Something that will reverse existing damage, but…” But it’s been slow. Laborious. The k-virus is alien and invidious. Has been designed specifically to thwart exactly what they’re trying.

Hansen scowls. “In theory,” he says, “if you had a single infected subject, and the time, and the resources, could you replicate the stabilization?” Now he’s getting it, Hermann thinks. The reason they haven’t shared what they know.

“Yes,” says Newt. “Both the Phase-II… and the Phase-I.”

“And the hive mind?”

“That’s the catch, yeah. But…” He hesitates. “If, theoretically, you didn’t care that much about the, um. The mental faculties of the result, a full amputation of the hindbrain should be enough.”

“I thought it grew back?”

Newt winces. “Depends on what you left behind in the cavity, doesn’t it?” He shares a look with Hermann. _“Herms, wanna fess up?”_

Hermann sighs. “My team is already prototyping something similar, albeit on a… bigger scale.” A daikaiju-sized scale, in fact. Brain surgery as a field weapon.

Hansen’s eyebrows hike. “You two have been busy.” Hermann says nothing and, for once, so does Newt. The Marshal doesn’t exactly look… pleased by their extracurricular activities. He stares them down for a moment, then says, “And the outbreaks? Where do they fit in?”

“It’s the stabilization,” Newt says. “It uses a modified version of the k-virus as a delivery vector. And, um. It leaves traces. In… someone who’s had it. Like, um. Me. So, um. If, for example, I got kidnapped at some point? And someone got access to a lot of my blood and tissue samples? They, um…”

“They’re trying to reverse engineer what you did.” Hansen finishes. “And hide it in the same efforts being done by… by our enemies.”

“Near as we can tell,” Hermann says, “yes.”

“Fuck,” says Hansen.

“Basically, yeah,” says Newt, though Hansen seems too busy rubbing his eyes to notice.

The next question, they were expecting:

“Who?”

Hermann looks at Newt, who looks back. Neither of them say a word.

“I see,” says Hansen, after the silence gets long. “You think it’s Corps?” More silence, so: “You’ve gotta throw me a bone here, kids. You realize I could have you up on court marshal for the shit you’ve done.”

Very casually, Hannibal reaches over to a side table. Said table hosts an unlit cigar in a gold astray, an untouched glass of scotch, and an MP7.

Hansen notices. “Put it away, Chau,” he snaps. “I said _could_. We’re all on the same side here, assuming someone would tell me which fucking side that was.” Then, back to Hermann and Newt: “I can’t protect you if I don’t know what I’m protecting you _from_.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Hermann says. “We know. That’s why we’re here.”

“Jesus, Hermann. You’re gonna trust the fucking mob over—”

“Marshal!” Hermann says. “Please. The people who are doing this, they’ve already shown they’re willing to hurt me to get to Newton. And…” This is a low blow, but: “And we have a family. Can you guarantee them protection?”

The Marshal scowls, gestures to Hannibal. “Can he.”

“Already done,” Hannibal says.

There are things, Hermann knows, a man like Hannibal Chau can promise that one like Marshal Hansen can’t. He’s sure the Marshal is very, very well aware of what they are.

“Fuck.” Hansen looks away, lips pressed thin and brows drawn. “I joined the Corps to save the Earth from giant monsters,” he says after a while. “Not… this.”

“We all did, sir,” Newt says. “But it was never going to be that simple. Human nature is human nature.”

Hansen doesn’t look like he disagrees. “The Anteverse doesn’t even need to point their weapons our way. They just need to send us the schematics. We’ll do the work of wiping ourselves out for them.”

Hermann and Newt share another look. They’d be lying to say a similar thought hadn’t already occurred.

“‘The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it’,” Hermann quotes.

It earns him a wry smirk from Hansen. “Burke, Doctor?”

“Einstein,” Hermann corrects. “We aren’t running. We’re just… being circumspect. But when you need us, we’ll be there.”

“We’re still PPDC,” Newt adds. “We’re just… AWOL. For a while.”

Hansen nods. “I don’t like it,” he says. “But I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“No.” From Hannibal. It’s a very final sort of sound.

* * *

The Marshal was one thing. This is entirely another.

Hermann has twelve missed messages from Vanessa, when he finally gets a chance to look at his phone. A combination of texts and voice mails, starting confused and edging into panicked.

Hermann takes the phone into the quietest, blandest unused office he can find, sits down, spends ten minutes staring at the ceiling, then makes the call.

Vanessa picks up on the second ring. “Hermann,” she says, “Hermann, there are men outside, I—”

“Vanessa.” The brutal cold in his own voice startles him. Hermann thinks it startles Vanessa, too.

“Hermann? What—?”

“No. Silence. I’m talking, Vanessa, and you need to listen.” God help him, he sounds like his father.

The phone call takes seven minutes. Vanessa is crying after two. Hermann, at least, manages to hold out until he gets back to his room.

* * *

_”Dude. I’m sure she knows.”_

Their suite in Hannibal’s compound is orders of magnitude bigger than their one at the ‘Dome. It’s marble and polished brass and red velvet. Hermann hates it. He hates the private pool and the enormous flatscreen and the well-furnished and utterly unused studies. The only thing that makes it bearable is the soft, warm feel of Newt’s scales under his cheek, the faint smell of sauerkraut and home.

Hermann can’t remember the last time he cried. Maybe he just doesn’t want to.

“ _We talked about this the last time she was here,”_ Newt reminds him. “ _Vans is a smart lady. She’ll know what’s going on.”_

“I made her cry.” It comes out in German. He doesn’t mean to say it in German, he just… can’t remember how to speak anything else right now. His mind feels like an enormous ball of grief and loathing, a hulking daikaiju so big it’s displaced every other thought.

There are some lies, Hermann thinks, a husband should never have to tell his wife. _I’m filing for divorce. The lawyers will send the papers next week,_ being very high on that list.

“ _Dude, of course she’s crying. She’s crying ‘cause people are fucking up the planet and her husband’s in danger and she can’t do shit about it.”_ And, god. What does it say about their mad, broken world that suddenly Newton is the calm and reasonable one?

“ _Hey, hey. I heard that.”_

“I can’t remember what I said.” The panic lances through Hermann, hot and sharp and sudden. “What… Oh, god. What if I said it wrong? Missed the codes? What if she thinks…” Thinks it’s real. That Hermann would really leave her, leave Lena.

God. Lena. What will Vanessa tell her? What—

Newt makes a shushing noise, arms curling closer around Hermann’s shaking shoulders. He has his own grief; a tangled yarn-ball of worry and fear he’s keeping as far from Hermann as he can. “ _Dude, you did great. Said everything you needed to say.”_

“You were listening.”

“ _Yeah. Sorry not sorry.”_

“Lena—”

“ _Let Vans worry about Lena. Monster Girl’s still young. Folks lie to their kids about shit like this all the time at her age. Then when she’s, like, thirty you’ll mention it offhand as a joke and Lena’ll be all like, ‘Wait._ That’s _what that was all about?’ Then we can all tell her what a badass James Bond type you really are.”_

Hermann squeezes his eyes shut hard enough for them to burn. He doesn’t feel like James Bond. He feels…

“I feel like my father.”

Newt sighs, presses his nares against Hermann’s temple. “ _I won’t lie, dude,”_ he says, “ _’cause you sure did sound like him. But, like, no offense? I can’t imagine Lars going to pieces ‘cause he thinks he upset your mom.”_

That’s entirely the point, of course. Hermann knows what people think he’s like, knows what people think of his marriage. _Assume you’re always being watched,_ Hannibal told them, years ago when they’d made these plans. _Use their assumptions about you against them. People think you’re a kaju-obsessed lunatic and an emotionless asshole? So be exactly that, nothing more. No one looks too hard when they think they’re right._

It’d sounded so simple, when Hannibal had explained it. He’d somehow neglected to mention how _hard_ it would be in practice. Because Uncle Vidkun may not be real, but the bank account in his name certainly is. Fat and heavy with money laundered through Hannibal’s empire, Hermann’s cut of their vulture’s work. And Hermann, now independently wealthy, dropping wife and child rather than share the spoils.

 _The kaiju are gone,_ he remembers saying with his father’s voice. _I intend to retire from the PPDC. With the job, goes the pension. So I hardly see the point maintaining this… charade any longer._ Hermann worked on the frontline of the War. His life expectancy had been low, the widow’s benefits generous. Why else, after all, would someone like Vanessa possibly debase themselves to marry someone like _him_?

God. He loves her. He loves her so, so much.

“ _She loves you too, dude. You know she does.”_

She hadn’t said as much, on the phone. That’d been one of the signals. No mentions of the word love in any context. Why would a business arrangement need it?

“ _On the plus side, I now own an island.”_

Hermann laughs. Just one bark, thick and hysteric. This is Newt’s cover story; black market sales of his own amputated organs, just enough to cover the cost of a private island in the Philippines. Undeveloped. For Newt to “get in touch with his kaiju side”.

“ _It’s a nice island, shaped kinda like a rocket, which I thought you’d like. We can take the girls when this is all over.”_

Like it ever will be. Nearly two decades of war and every victory a gateway to something worse.

“ _Don’t think like that, dude.”_ Hermann can feel Newt’s despair. But it’s threaded through with hope, too, bright and gleaming like the glow in his hide. “ _We’ll get through this. By the time Lena has her own hellspawn this is all gonna be a distant memory.”_

“How?” Hermann says, his fingers tightening around the muscles of Newt’s secondary arms. “How can you believe that? For every victory against the Anteverse we build a weapon that Earth can turn against itself. How long before we see Jaeger battling Jaeger? Destroying cities already turned to toxic cesspits from the slaughtered corpses of dead kaijin soldiers, converted against their will?”

“ _Oh, dude.”_ Newt sighs, is silent for a while. Thinking. Then: “ _If we didn’t have missiles, we wouldn’t have space travel. If we didn’t have the atomic bomb we couldn’t treat cancer. If we didn’t have stealth jets we wouldn’t have microwaves, and if we didn’t have bullets we wouldn’t have tampons. I mean, c’mon dude. Do I really need to give you, of all people, the ‘technology isn’t inherently evil’ speech? Yeah, we’re in a war and the world is full of assholes with tiny dicks and no imagination. So what? The whole of human history has been like that. And then while the small dick assholes are fucking about with their rulers, someone else’s gonna come along and say, ‘Y’know. If you built a Jaeger arm_ real small _I bet you could stick it on an amputee’. Or, like, ‘You know where it’d be cool to open a Breach to? Alpha Centauri’. And in a hundred years, a thousand, no-one’s gonna remember all the bad shit because they’ll be too busy planet-hopping through portals with their awesome robot bodies, a different one for every day, changed like suits. All they’ll be called ‘herms’, and no-one except history nerds will remember how or why and that won’t even matter because things will be so fucking awesome that no one will care. The curve of history goes up, dude. It always does.”_

“You’re so _certain_.”

“ _Yeah, dude. Things only suck in the short term. On the scale of human history… I mean, for all things are fucking awful, you still wanna trade it to go and live back in the 1950s? Or the 950s? Or the 50s?”_

Hermann does not. He likes not dying of smallpox and being an academic and not being hung for sodomy or burned for deicide. And for all he wishes the War had never happened, that they could be living in some strange alternate timeline where wormholes and aliens and monsters were still fictions… for all that, he’d still want to be living _now_. Just a different sort of now.

He’d take the future, too. Newt’s future, bright and hopeful and strange.

Very slowly, Hermann uncurls from Newt’s arms. Not moving away, just not clinging quite so desperately. “I want to see Vanessa,” he says. “I want to hold Lena.” Funny. Hermann loves his wife and his daughter deeply but god knows he’s not always the most attentive to social interactions. He’s gone days, _weeks_ , without speaking to them before. But it’s… different now. Before, nothing was stopping him but his own absent-mindedness; the only person he had to blame was himself. Now, there’s something keeping him from his family and he’d give anything to have it gone.

“ _I know, dude,”_ says Newt. “ _Hannibal’s gonna send someone, and I’m sure he’s got some criminal mastermind way for you guys to pass notes in class. I know it’s not the same, but…”_ He shrugs. “ _And if things… get bad…”_

If things get bad, they bring Vanessa and Lena here. It’s a last resort, the girls have their own life in Europe—Vanessa her work, Lena her school—and deserve better than being smuggled into the country and locked up in a bunker.

It’s not like they haven’t planned this. They have. They’ve planned and discussed and half of everything they’re doing was Vanessa’s idea in the first place. But, god. It still hurts. It’s _unfair_. They saved the world. Things were supposed to get better after that, not worse in a different way.

Hermann does not consider himself a violent man. Still, sitting on that strange bed in that strange room, he makes a vow.

He’s going to find the people doing this; find the people who’d hurt his family to hurt the world. He’s going to find them, and he’s going to end them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I like the part in this where you can tell it's in The Future because Newt and Hermann both simultaneously edit the same Word document. Magic!
> 
> [Destroy the world that we took so long to make](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVyzMp5KAg).


	2. “I can’t get scales, Vans! I have a career!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack. AO3 y u so bad at supporting emoji?
> 
>  _[Welcome to the kingdom of the blagger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFf3B1575WQ)_.

When Vanessa gets off the phone, she cries until she passes out from the exhaustion. She’s glad it’s late, and that Lena is in bed. She doesn’t want to have to try and explain to her daughter the way her eyes won’t stay clear and her nose won’t stay dry and her mind won’t stay focused. All she can think about is the black SUV that’s appeared outside their flat and the sound of Hermann’s voice not-quite breaking on the word “divorce”.

Hong Kong has never felt so far away. Not even at the end, when Vanessa had watched, hand on her swelling belly, as monsters has crawled from the ocean and started tearing it apart. Monsters, at least, they can fight. This? This is something else.

She wakes up with a splitting headache and something cold balled deep inside her gut. As hard a Jaeger’s hull and as toxic as Kaiju Blue. Whoever’s doing this—to her family, to the world—is going to _pay_.

She softens her face with makeup and covers the poison in her eyes with sunglasses. Then she takes Lena to school. Lena’s quiet, more so than usual. She knows something isn’t right, even if she’s too small and too innocent to realize what. If Vanessa has her way, Lena will never know. She’ll never feel the cold, cruel gaze of the people who watch them. Never hear the soft wingbeats of the people who watch _them_. Let Lena think her mother’s worried about work, or the outbreak in Guìyáng, or any of the usual problems. Not about a knock on the door and a man in a velvet suit, telling her Hermann was found with a bullet in his skull or that Newt was cut up for parts. Or worse.

There is so, so much of worse in this world.

She has a shoot all week. The photographer’s a pig and the designer is worse. The sort whose work is all shock and no substance, who treats Vanessa and the others like meat. Who leers and whose hands wander, pinching and stroking more flesh than cloth. Who has them out in the cold wearing scraps then complains when they shiver. Vanessa wants to scream at him. _The world is ending and people are dying. Good people. How come you’re spared when they aren’t?_

“Twenty thousand dead in China,” says Sarah, scrolling through her phone as the stylist re-does her hair. “They’re saying it’s another new strain.”

“It’s still K3,” Vanessa says. “Have you been vaccinated?”

Sarah makes a face. “I was going to,” she says. “But… I dunno. I heard it, y’know. Has _side effects_. People bleeding blue, breaking out in scales. That sort of thing.”

Vanessa sighs. She’s heard this a million times. “Honey, the k-virus does that. Right before it melts the flesh off your bones and turns your blood to bathroom cleaner. Get vaccinated.”

“I can’t get scales, Vans! I have a career!” Sarah’s eyes are wide, bright blue and gentle. Sarah is young, and sweet. Vanessa has a constant urge to wrap her up in blankets and give her tea. She workers if that means she’s getting old.

“You won’t get scales from the vaccine,” she says. “I promise.”

“How do you know?”

Vanessa laughs. Then, before she’s thought about it, “It’s Newt’s vaccine. He created it.”

Sarah frowns, though not deeply. A young model’s frown, one terrified of lines. “Wait,” she says. “ _Newt_? As in, your husband’s crazy kaiju-obsessed boyfriend?”

It’s like a punch in the gut. _Your husband_. Except he’s not, right now, is he? Vanessa feels something inside her start to shake, the earthquakes from a kaiju’s footsteps. She swallows it down, leashes the energy and uses it to power a smile. Vanessa is very, very good at smiling when she doesn’t feel it. She’s a model. Of course she is.

“Newt is… Newt,” the calm, smiling part of Vanessa says. “But he’s good at his job. I promise he doesn’t want anyone else to get unwanted scales.” Not when he’s so busy dealing with his own.

“I can’t believe…” Sarah starts. Then: “We are talking about the same Newt, right? Tattoos, mad scientist hair, cute in a ‘chubby nerd’ sort of way?”

Vanessa wants to scream. She has photos of Hermann and herself and Newt, but nothing recent. Nothing recent she can show people. “That’s the one,” she lies.

“I thought they gave the guy who invented the vaccine a Nobel prize?”

“They did. Newt uses it as a paperweight in the lab.” She’d suggested to Hermann once that they get it framed. Hermann had just rolled his eyes and told her not to waste her money. _It reminds him too much of what he’s lost,_ he’d said. The last accolade given to a dead man, still living. If Newt could pretend not to care about it, then he could pretend not to care about his old life, too. The last time Vanessa had seen the medal it’d been almost unrecognizable, pitted and worn away by Kaiju Blue, half-hidden under samples and reports in the chaos of Newt’s side of the lab.

“Wow,” Sarah is saying. She seems to be processing Vanessa’s words, teeth smudging the lipstick on her lower lip. Finally, she says: “Okay. I mean, if… if you say it’s safe. I’ll go tomorrow.”

Vanessa gives her a smile, then they head back to the shoot.

She makes it all the way through before she has to lock herself in the bathroom and scream and scream and scream.

* * *

Friday is the investor party. Vanessa is exhausted and angry and raw and the last thing she wants to do is smile and look pretty for a roomful of rich gits. She wants to grab Lena and book a flight to Hong Kong. To find Hermann and beg him to come home, back to Europe. To leave behind the madness and the monsters and get some dull tenured lecturing job and be _safe_ , safe and boring, just the four of them, and she knows it won’t work, knows even if it would Hermann would never do it, would never abandon a world he could help save. It why Vanessa loves him, one of the reasons, and it’s one of the reasons he drives her crazy, too.

So. Investor party.

She spends the evening clinging close to Giotto’s arm. His designs, her ideas, their business. Fashion for the post-Breach world. Something like that, she’s still sorting out the niche. For now, they’re hoping to skate by on charm and brand. All Vanessa knows is that she can’t keep doing shoots like the one this week forever. She needs a life after forty. Something easier than cold skin and groping hands.

Gi introduces her to at least two dozen people and Vanessa’s mind blanks each one. They are, by turns, tedious, talentless, obnoxious, and petty. They kiss her hand and tell her she’s beautiful as their eyes glaze over and they look away. She feels invisible, even as men openly stare. At her tits, at her arse. She should be used to it, she _is_ used to it. Any week other than this week she’d be smirking a knowing little smirk and calling Hermann the second she got home.

Hermann’s never looked at her like she was an empty shell. Vanessa’s fairly certain he didn’t even notice she was attractive until after she’d asked him out to dinner and people started making incredulous comments ( _You? And her?_ ). Yet he always listens to her as if what she’s saying is as important to him as Breach calculations and Jaeger schematics. Always considers her problems with care, makes his responses thoughtful and genuine.

God. She misses him. She loves him like a physical ache, the distance between them as deep and as brutal as the ocean.

She’s on her ill-advised third cocktail of the night when the conversation she’s been dreading happens. James Percy is the culprit. He’s old and thick-necked, face like someone’s attempt as fashioning a pig from bread dough, pale and sweaty and raw. He’s spent more time staring at her breasts than making small talk, and his gaze doesn’t shift when he says, “So. Vanessa, I have to ask. Any relation to _Doctor_ Gottlieb?” He has a particular emphasis on the word “doctor”. It’s the sort of emphasis that makes the men around him laugh.

They don’t, Vanessa knows, expect her to know who they’re talking about. She has a sudden deep wish Gi was there—he’d roll his eyes as squeeze her in wordless understanding—but he’s currently trapped in his own awful conversation, half a room away.

So Vanessa smiles a razor smile and says, “Which one do you mean? My husband, or my father-in-law?” Vanessa has met Lars Gottlieb exactly twice. If it was a choice between a third encounter or coming face to face with a daikaiju, she’d much prefer to take her chances with the latter. They’re better behaved.

Percy splutters at her answer, covers it up with a sip of champagne. “Hermann?” he says, using the familiar name as if they’re old friends. “Hermann Gottlieb is your husband?”

Vanessa just arches an eyebrow. She can feel Percy’s gaze scrape across her fingers, looking for the wedding ring she hasn’t worn since that awful, awful phone call.

“Good god,” says one of the other men. Rick Something. Thin and reedy, deliberately dressed down in jeans and sneakers. Some startup CEO, he reminds Vanessa of Newt with all the compassion hollowed out. “That must make for fascinating dinner conversation.” The men laugh. Vanessa doesn’t. “However did you meet?”

“At university,” Vanessa says. “I needed a tutor in mathematics.” Numbers have never been Vanessa’s strongest suit, but thankfully made up only a small component of her MBA. She’d picked Hermann from the start, by sitting outside a lecture in advanced mathematics for a week and approaching the one boy who didn’t stare at her as he left.

“Well,” says Percy. “You certainly got one.”

“Must be tough,” Rick says. “With him being away and all. Hong Kong, isn’t it?” Vanessa knows _exactly_ what he wants from her when he says it.

“Hong Kong, yes. But it’s hardly difficult, darling.” She’s memorized these lines by now, has their delivery down to every last perfect little smirk. “He has his work and his lover, I have Lena and plenty of opportunities to keep myself… amused, should the need arise.”

She usually loves this, loves seeing the reactions, using them as a sort of test. Loves sharing the results with Hermann.

Usually, she loves it. Tonight, she feels sick. Sick and breathless. She wants Hermann so much it hurts.

“Was he there during the attack?” The third man is barely a man at all. Percy’s son, also unfortunately named James. Unlike his father, who’s too busy muttering about _what sort of man could possibly_ , James’ eyes a huge and shining. “Aurora,” he adds. “Did he see it?”

“We all did,” Vanessa says. “Lena and I were visiting at the time.”

“Dear god,” says Percy the elder. “You’ve been that close to one of those… those _things_?”

Vanessa shrugs. She’s been much, much closer than that. “We were hardly close. Hermann and I were in Kowloon at the time. Having a romantic evening while Newt took care of Lena. Unfortunately, that meant they were both in the ‘Dome when Aurora appeared. They watched her die from LOCCENT. Lena named her, in fact. She’s going through a princess phase.” So detached, so clinical. Vanessa tries not to think about sitting on a hotel bed, curled around Hermann as he howled, blood pouring from his eyes.

“Holy shit,” says James, much to his father’s distress. “Holy shit that is _so cool_! Was the fight awesome? I bet it was awesome! I’d _kill_ to see a Jaeger-kaiju fight.”

“James,” snaps Percy. “Please.”

Vanessa ignores him, turns to the boy instead. “We watched it on the television, and Newt”—had been a shivering wreck afterwards, curled around Lena like she was the only thing keeping him whole—“told us what happened. It wasn’t ‘awesome’, I’m afraid. It was tragic, not even really a fight. Newt told me afterwards he believes Aurora wanted to die. It’s awful, you understand, what they do them before they send them. Tortured and confined, minds subsumed to the hive. They’re all mad with it. Killing them’s a mercy but only because we have no better option.” Not yet.

Rick scoffs. “Oh god. Don’t tell me you’re one of _those_. An activist. Believe in all that tosh about the ‘hive mind’, the poor oppressed little monsters.”

Vanessa’s fingers twitch, just once. “Of course, darling,” she says. “It’s the truth, after all.”

“Oh. My. God.” James seems to suddenly have had a revelation. “Ohmygod. You— ‘Newt’! You know Newton Geiszler! _The_ Newton Geiszler!”

He sounds so thrilled, bouncing on the balls of his feet even as he’s trying not to. Vanessa smiles, feels some of the tension ease out of her shoulders. “Of course,” she says. “Do I detect a fan?”

“Oh, don’t encourage him,” Percy grumbles, even as his son launches into a Newt-worthy babble about how “Doctor Geiszler”—Vanessa doesn’t correct the pronunciation—is “ohmygod _the best_ ” and “my hero” and “so cool” and “holy crap is it true? Is it true he Drifted with a kaiju?”

“With Hermann, yes,” says Vanessa, a little of the old joy coming back at the horror on Rick and Percy’s faces. “They were the first humans to connect to the hive mind. It’s how they discovered how to close the Breach.”

“That’s got to fuck a man up,” Rick mutters, not quietly.

“It’s unnatural, is what it is,” comes Percy’s opinion.

“I heard,” Rick says, cruel eyes narrowed at Vanessa, “that _it_ got inside them. Turned them kaiju. That’s why no one’s seen Geiszler in public for years. He’s some kind of howling monstrosity the Corps keeps locked up under the Shatterdome. And god only knows what it did to Gottlieb.”

Vanessa hates him. It’s like her cocktail is Kaiju Blue and it’s sitting at the bottom of her stomach, churning and toxic. _They gave up their lives for this,_ she wants to scream. _You’d all be dead or worse if not for them._

Instead, she just arches a brow and says, “Newt always was a bit of a howler, it’s true.”

James is still on a roll. “No,” he says, to Rick. “No, no. That’s— you’re thinking of the Beast of Sham Shui Po.”

“James, that’s enough,” growls Percy.

Vanessa ignores him. “The beast of what?”

“Sham Shui Po. It’s a district in Hong Kong. A while back a _who-oo-oo-ole_ craptonne of people? They saw a kaiju, running through the streets. Like, a little one. People thought it might’ve been a baby? Or something. But… Look, I’ll show you.” He pulls out a phone from his pocket, starts dialing up YouTube.

“Oh,” says Percy. “Here we go.”

“Here, see?” James is perfectly happy to ignore his father, and so is Vanessa. Instead, he hands over his phone, showing blurry YouTube footage of what is still, to Vanessa at least, very, very obviously Newt, racing through Sham Shui Po Park. The timestamp matches the night Newt was abducted. The night Hermann almost died.

“People on the internet?” James continues. “They think it’s a baby. Maybe escaped from the Shatterdome. But I don’t think so. The proportions are adult. Plus, it’s way too small. Like, _wa-aa-ay_ too small, even for a newborn. Or… hatched. Or… whatever. If kaiju even breed, which—”

“They can,” Vanessa says. “And you’re right. It’s too small.” She smirks. “Daikaiju live birth. Their young can still eat you whole.” She’s heard Newt’s stories. And Hannibal’s.

James’ eyes go incredibly wide. He looks like Newt, Vanessa thinks. Or… he doesn’t. At all. Wrong hair, wrong face, wrong physique. But there’s something about him…

He’s scrabbling with his phone again, much to his father’s grumbling. “James, really. She doesn’t want to—”

“Here, look.” James hands the device to Vanessa. “I went through _all_ the footage. Like, _all_ of it. To try and reconstruct the Beast. This, um…” He suddenly stops, cheeks going a brilliant red.

“Did you draw this?” Vanessa asks.

“Um. Yeah. Kinda?”

“It’s very good.” It is. Very good. It also looks nothing at all like Newt, but Vanessa can see how James has done the reconstruction. Scunner’s body, Raiju’s tail, Mutavore’s head. Vanessa points out all the parts she recognizes and thinks James might faint from the praise.

“You… you really know your kaiju,” he whispers.

She laughs. “Blame Lena, my daughter. She takes after her papa, it drives Hermann crazy.” Hermann pretends it drives him crazy. “Can you send me this?”

James nods, awestruck, and they spend a few moments fumbling with technology. Then Vanessa sends the image to Newt, along with a text:

_I found a fan of yours. Did you know they’re calling you the Beast of Sham Shui Po?  
He drew fanart for (of) you. It’s very good._

It’s early in Hong Kong, very early. Humans will be sleeping but she suspects Newt won’t be, is rewarded by a:

 _yea i try not to self-google but_  
holy crap  
ahahahaha  
omg

“Wait,” says James. “Wait. Oh, bloody hell. Oh bloody hell, you didn’t… you didn’t send that to…”

Vanessa smiles, her Mona Lisa smile. “He loves it,” she says. “I swear.”

Meanwhile, her phone buzzes.

_name quick gimme a name_

Vanessa texts it back, even as James is making a strange, gasping sort of sound.

The response takes a little while, but eventually she gets it. It’s a selfie of Newt. He’s holding the phone in one of his big hands, making a peace sign with the other. In his small hands, he’s holding a tablet with words in his own handwriting:

RAD PIC JAMES MY MAN

HERES A BETTER REF FOR U

☮ NEWT

Vanessa sends it back to James. Rick has to catch him when he faints.

* * *

“What on god’s poisoned Earth did you do to Lord Percy’s son?”

Monday. Lena is at school, Vanessa is at Gi’s studio, assessing the damage from Friday. She doesn’t want to be here. She’s just come from the lawyers’, a big brown paper envelope tucked into her satchel.

“Because whatever it was,” Gi continues, “it worked. Lord Percy has agreed to invest. Not much, but enough for six months, enough to get us off the ground and this is it, Vans, this is what you were waiting for and—” He stops. “Vans? Vanessa?”

She startles when his fingers descend on her shoulder, the teacup in her hand rattling against its saucer. “Hm?” Her mind feels slow, quiet and cold. Weighed down by an envelope full of lies. _How long can we drag it out?_ she’d asked. Months, had been the answer. Now all she needs to do is think of an excuse for why she’d want to. Why the Vanessa Gottlieb she plays in this horrid production would want to.

“Vans, honey? Is everything all right?”

The sofa dips as Gi sits next to her. He’s short and round and soft, big dark eyes framed by too much eyeshadow, far too bright.

Vanessa opens her mouth, closes it. Feels tears build in her eyes and tries to blink them back. She won’t cry. She _won’t_.

“Hermann,” she starts, gets exactly that far before her throat closes.

“Take your time, honey.”

Vanessa can’t speak. Instead, she reaches into her bag, and hands Gi the envelope. He takes it, flicks through two pages, then his face crumples into a sympathy so acute Vanessa feels like she can’t breathe.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says. “Come here.” He opens his arms, and Vanessa falls into them.

Then she cries. And cries. And cries.

* * *

When the man appears, he calls himself Fernando Serinus. It’s almost certainly an alias. He’s six foot five and made from abs. Vanessa meets him on a shoot where the photographer spends two hours complaining about Fern’s tattoos. He has one of a vulture on the inside of his wrist, and no teardrops shed from its wings.

He’s polite and gentle and kind, and he’s so unlike Hermann that Vanessa spends a whole evening sobbing in gratitude.

* * *

It’s Sarah who gives her the idea, Sarah who texts with a, _got my shots no scales so far_ the week after their conversation. Vanessa pulls out her laptop and does some searching. An hour later, she has a lunch date with the CEO of the Barrier Vaccine Advocacy Network.

* * *

“Thirty percent of the population, and that’s a generous estimate.” Darla Harraq is in her fifties, lined and elegant. “A generous estimate based on anyone who’s ever had a single vaccination against a single strain. If we’re talking up-to-date immunizations, it’s more like ten.”

Vanessa feels cold, despite the warmth inside the cafe. “I didn’t realize it was so low,” she says. Every time there’s a new vaccine available, Vanessa makes sure she and Lena are first in line.

“There’s s lot of misinformation out there, as I’m sure you’re aware,” Darla says. Then, “Forgive me, I have to ask—?”

“He is, was, my husband.” Vanessa makes herself smile when she says it. “We’re currently separated.”

“Apologies,” says Darla. “I didn’t intend to drag up painful memories.”

Vanessa nods. “Thank you, I…” She stops, takes a deep breath and a sip of tea. Tries another tack. “It may be more relevant, but I’m also still in contact with Newton Geiszler.”

Darla’s eyes go very round. “Doctor Geiszler?” she says. “ _The_ Doctor Geiszler?”

Vanessa nods. “We met through Hermann. He’s… He won’t do public appearances”—though not for lack of enthusiasm—“but if he can assist in any other way, I’m sure he’ll be happy to.” He’d better be, Vanessa thinks. She might be saving the world but she’s also trying to save Newt’s scaly hide along with it.

* * *

The first big PR push takes nearly a month to organize. Vanessa doesn’t want to think of it as a “stunt” but, well. It is, it absolutely is.

They call it Skin2Save, and it’s Vanessa and Sarah and a dozen other girls Vanessa and Gi have mentored over the years, plus one terrified young doctor, standing in Trafalgar Square, surrounded by a sea of cameras and leering reporters. No matter the cause, in Vanessa’s experience, leering reporters are what happens, whenever lingerie models turn up half naked in public.

Because, yeah. That’s the “stunt” part.

Darla, fully clothed from scarf-to-shoe, makes a speech. She does very well, cool and calm and maternal, and absolutely nothing like the nervous wreck she’d been when rehearsing yesterday. This is, Vanessa knows, the most attention her organization has ever received.

“My son, Daniel, died of K2D8,” she says. “Two years ago, in an outbreak in Australia. He was there doing environmentalist work on the Barrier Reef. His team contracted the virus after exposure to carrier fish. About half had been vaccinated. They survived. The ones who weren’t, my son included, were taken to a quarantine facility. It took them six weeks to be declared dead, only two for them to be considered medically no longer human. At the end, there weren’t even bodies. Just canisters of biohazardous waste.”

There’s a pause, heavy and silent.

“My son’s death,” Darla continues, voice breaking, just a touch, “was exactly that. A waste. He died because he believed the lies, the rumors, about the k-vaccine. He refused to take it, believing it would ‘turn him kaiju’. That he’d grow scales or a third eye.” She presses against the centre of her head, gets a nervous laugh from the audience. “Well, in the end, I watched the k-virus turn my son into a monster, and it was nothing so fairytale as a few scales. Not when his bones turned to glass, shattered from within by lungs and a liver swelling to fit a creature three times the size of a twenty-year-old boy. Not when his blood turned to ammonia, then to acid that dissolved his flesh.”

Another pause, another uncomfortable shifting of the crowd. Not just reporters, they have onlookers now. A lot of onlookers.

“I’m sure by now,” Darla continues, “you’re wondering why I’m telling you such a gristly story while standing in front of such beautiful women.” Here she gestures at Vanessa and the girls, gets a half-hearted wolf-whistle from the crowd. “Well. I’m sorry to say, it’s the only thing we could think of to make you show up. To pay attention. The ravages of the k-virus and the safety of the vaccine have been known for years, and yet vaccination rates in the U.K. are well below fifty percent, in no small part due to the same misinformation that killed my son. So to try and convince you of the vaccine’s safety, we’ve assembled a team of some of the country’s most beautiful women. Here, today, they’ll receive full inoculation against every strain of k-virus we can currently prevent. We’ve had them strip down to prove they’re not hiding any scales anywhere you can’t see.” A small round of laughter. “Over the coming weeks, each woman will keep an online diary, accessible via our foundation’s website. If there are any horns or extra eyes as a result of what we do here, you can bet they will be the most glamorous on the whole planet. And, thanks to the generosity of our donors, we have a team of doctors on hand who can provide inoculations, free of charge, to members of the public. Those of you who choose to take this option may also pose for a photograph with our lovely models. We encourage you to share your experiences here today with the hashtag, skin2save. Thank you for listening. Now, let’s save some lives.”

* * *

They’re trending almost immediately, a combination of slacktivism and puritan outrage. Vanessa gets her jabs and poses with the other girls and gets photographed and interviewed.

“What do you say to parents who believe the k-vaccine is harmful to children?” asks one journalist, eyes smug and calculating.

“I’d tell them my own daughter is fully vaccinated and the only side effect we’ve seen is her professing a desire to be a exobiologist when she grows up.” Vanessa tries her sweetest smile. The journalist doesn’t flinch.

“Your ‘own daughter’ is Lena Gottlieb, correct? Only child of Hermann Gottlieb, one of the principle engineers behind the PPDC Jaeger program?”

Vanessa feels the bottom drop out of her stomach, even as her smile remains soft and bright. “That’s right.”

“Is this the same Hermann Gottlieb who’s currently suing you for divorce?”

“I hardly see how that’s relevant to raising awareness for the k-vaccine.” She knows it’s the wrong thing as soon as she says it. Knows it’s wrong by the cruel gleam in the reporter’s eye.

“Ms. Gottlieb,” he says, an ugly emphasis on the first part, mispronunciation on the latter, “is it true you’re still in contact with Newt Geiszler? The same Newt Geiszler who hasn’t been sighted since the developing the very vaccine you’re here today to promote?”

 _That’s “Doctor” to you,_ Vanessa wants to say. _And it’s pronounced Geiszler._

Instead, she says:

“Doctor Geiszler is a family friend, yes.”

“I think we both know it’s a little more than that.”

Vanessa wants to hit him. She wants to hit, and scream, and demand he tell her, right here, right now, how many times he’s saved the world. How many kaiju are dead and Breaches are closed and buildings still stand and people still live because of his life’s work? How many years did he spend at the front, living on poisoned coasts in abandoned cities, always one bad day away from annihilation? How dare he judge her, judge Newt, judge Hermann, for trying to find some solace, some humanity, in the midst of all of that?

What she actually says is, “We’re done here.” She turns away, but not before she sees the victorious gleam in the reporter’s watery, pale eyes.

* * *

By that evening, Skin2Save has headlines in every major news feed in the country. Most are positive, if salacious. The word “stunt” is used a lot, plus a few smatterings of “sexist”. Mostly there are quotes from doctors, verifying the safety of the vaccine, and from (vaccinated) survivors of outbreaks and the families of (unvaccinated) victims.

Vanessa’s phone starts ringing the next day and doesn’t stop; requests for appearances, for interviews. For her and for Darla and for the other girls, too. Their blogs get so many hits it crashes the foundation’s website. Vanessa calls in a girl with blue hair and leggings patterned like the sky of the Anteverse to fix things, which works for exactly eight hours, until Jewel makes a post about coughing blue phlegm.

Then it’s a parade of doctors and press releases, including a note from Newton Geiszler himself, scrawled on his tablet and posted as a reaction gif in the blog posts’ comments:

NORMAL REACTION

ULL FEEL SHIT FOR 2-3 DAYS, LIKE A FLU

CALL ME IF IT GETS WORSE (VANS HAS MY NUMBER)

Jewel feels fine after a good night’s rest, but by then the media is too rabid to notice.

* * *

The reporter with the cold, watery eyes runs the story. Vanessa can’t say she doesn’t expect it. _PACIFIC TRIANGLE: THE DIVORCE THAT THREATENS THE WORLD_. She has to give whomever wrote the headline points for hyperbole.

Newt sends her a text:

_apparently were gettin married now  
i should warn u i squeeze the toothpaste from the middle_

Vanessa wants to ask how Hermann is, whether he’s seen the headlines, whether they’ve upset him. Instead, she replies:

_Unacceptable! I’m breaking this off immediately!_

The reply she gets back:

_fine but im keeping the ring_

(Vanessa’s own wedding ring is in the jewelry box by her bed. Her finger feels strange where it’s missing. Too smooth, too exposed.)

“How’re you holding up?” Fern asks her. They’re lying naked in the bed in his apartment, Lena safety seconded with the babysitter. Vanessa feels wound up and wired, the post-sex flush already gone.

“I miss him,” she whispers to the ceiling. “Every day. I love him so much, I—” She cuts herself off. _Remember you are always being watched,_ Hannibal Chau tells her in her mind.

“Mm,” says Fern. “Thing’ll get better.” His voice is so gentle, so kind. He’s a good man.

Vanessa nods, tightly, and doesn’t even try to stop the tears.

* * *

Two days later, someone leaves a bouquet of flowers on her doorstep. It’s nothing special, nothing expensive or fancy. It’s red roses and white chrysanthemums, all slightly tatty, worn and half-wilted from too long spent on display.

Vanessa knows exactly where they come from. A Tesco, two doors down from the restaurant she’d invited Hermann to on their first date. Almost as if someone had gotten all the way to the door before realizing it might, in fact, _be_ a date and that some effort should be made.

Vanessa takes the flowers and arranges them in a vase as if they’re the most precious orchids, then leaves them on her bedside table.

They die within a week but, by then, a replacement has already appeared.

* * *

“It won’t work, darling. It’s been done. A thousand times of done.”

“Not like this, it hasn’t.”

“Vanessa…” Giotto sighs the sigh of the long suffering, but Vanessa stares him down, resolute.

They’re arguing about Lord Percy’s money. Or, more specifically, how to spend it to launch their fashion line. Vanessa knows exactly what they should be doing, now she just has to convince Giotto it’s a good idea.

“Just come with me, Gi,” Vanessa says. “To Christchurch. It’ll work out, trust me.”

“Vans, Christchurch is a ghost town. _New Zealand_ is a ghost town. And it’s a long way to go for a bad idea.”

Vanessa huffs. “Giotto Singh you look at me,” she uses the voice she uses on Hermann, when he’s in one of his more obstinate moods. “On Monday, I am getting on a plane, and you are coming with me.”

“… Vanessa—”

“Gi-ii-ii.” She draws it out. Now she’s using the voice she uses on Lena.

That’s the one that cracks it, Gi’s shoulders slumping as he throws his meticulously lacquered hands into the air. “Fine,” he says. “We’re going to Christchurch.

Vanessa smiles. “Excellent. And don’t forget to pack your favorite camera.”

* * *

On Monday, model and budding activist, Vanessa Gottlieb, and fashion designer and photographer, Giotto Singh, board a flight at Heathrow Airport, headed for Christchurch.

Someone definitely gets off at the other end, but it isn’t them.


	3. “Gottlieb? More like Hottlieb amiright?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _[Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit, Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhOTNQcQq4)_.

The first time he sees his wife on television, standing beautiful (and mostly naked) in Trafalgar Square, Hermann cries. Newt hates it when Hermann cries. He’s so controlled, so tightly wound. Watching that break? It’s one of those things that shouldn’t happen, like the bottom of the ocean tearing open and vomiting monsters.

Hermann watches the footage from Skin2Save on loop for like an hour, tears streaming down his cheeks, hands shaking where they clutch the tablet. Newt sits curled around him, feeling small and helpless, trying to project comfort and safety and love because he doesn’t know what else to _do_ , how else to make things better.

Things are bad. Real bad. Hannibal seems to be losing people every day, in at least a dozen countries, running his secret war against an enemy they can’t even identify. Said enemy is funded, probably government, and has reach back into the PPDC. That’s all they know. That’s all they’ve ever known. Newt and Hermann are scientists, not… whatever the sort of people are who investigate ops units so black they make the void of space look like the heart of a sun. Newt doesn’t even know the proper word for what they’re up against.

Things are much, much worse than they thought. They’ve been scouring back over every k-virus outbreak since the things began, correlating strains and breaches. The E-origin outbreaks—E for Earth—are much more numerous than they’d thought, or hoped. Mostly hiding amidst the A-origin—A for Anteverse—death toll, but not always. Newt’s identified at least a dozen k-virus strains that he now believes to be purely Earthly in origin.

Their enemies aren’t just reusing the work of the Anteverse. They’re trying to improve on it. Newt’s got one guy with an undergrad in microbial forensics trying to make some conclusions but they’re all really just stumbling around in the dark, gasping and afraid. Hermann’s side of the lab is doing a little better, if only because their numbers are starting to work out. That’s the thing about the hive mind; it’s powerful, but predictable. Too many minds smoothed out into too much uniformity, all variance and innovation beaten away. Hermann’s been trying to put together a model for the k-virus like he had for the daikaiju since this whole thing started. None of the data ever lined up. Before, they’d thought that maybe, just maybe, the hive mind had learnt randomization. Turns out, the E-origin strains were just polluting the numbers. Now they can extract them, Hermann thinks he’ll be able to predict whens and wheres and whats by the end of the month.

They’re also certain their enemies already can. Some of the pure E-origin outbreaks look, in retrospect, like they’ve been launched solely to disrupt Hermann’s equations.

Newt doesn’t want to think about that. About the sort of people who’d _do_ that. He’s spent nearly his entire adult life trying to save humanity from extinction. The thought that someone from _his own species_ —by birth and identity, if not current biology—would be working against that…

Well. Newt’s a pacifist by politics. But he’s starting to see why people make exceptions.

“They’re going to eviscerate her.” Hermann, voice thready and tired. His fingers are ghosting over the surface of the tablet, over Vanessa’s smiling face. “The British press. They’ll tear her apart.”

“ _Well, yeah,”_ says Newt. “ _I think that’s kinda the point, dude. If she’s in every tabloid, she can’t exactly get disappeared quietly in the night, can she? And if, like,_ this _is the hill she’s chosen to die on? If something does happen, there’s an obvious motive, sitting right there.”_

Hermann startles, like this hadn’t occurred to him, which Newt knows is true.

“ _Also,”_ Newt adds, “ _this way, she’s helping us, hindering our enemies, and saving lives along the way. I mean, dude. You really know to pick ‘em.”_

“She picked me,” Hermann says, voice barely a whisper. “I still have no idea why.”

Newt makes a disgusted sound. “ _Go for the rockstar genius war hero? Man, you’re right. Why would any girl want that?”_

“I wasn’t,” Hermann says. “Back then, I wasn’t any of those things.”

“ _Shit like that echoes, man,”_ Newt says. “ _Trust me, I know. First time I saw you I was like, ‘Damn. That guy’s gonna win us this war.’”_

Hermann scowls, his fingers stilling. “I did no such thing. And neither did you. The first time you saw me, you burst out laughing.”

“ _Uh, yeah,”_ says Newt. “‘ _Cause I was thinking, like, ‘Holy shit Gottlieb? More like Hottlieb amiright?’”_

Hermann’s neck goes a delicious shade of pink. “You were not.”

So Newt sends him the memory, dusty and faded with time and war. It’s long since lost the details, just edges and impressions now. The terrible music in the cafe where they’d agreed to meet, the sweat on Newt’s palms and the flutter of his heart. How desperately he’d been looking around, blinking big and astigmatic behind his glasses, searching for a face he’d never seen. He’d known Hermann had a cane and that had been about it for description. In turn, he’d told Hermann he’d be wearing a KMFDM t-shirt. They’d recognized each other the moment their eyes met.

It’d felt like a discman jumping tracks, like Trespasser’s footsteps, like the echo of the Drift, rattling down the timeline. Hermann had been sitting there, prissy and pinched in his ironic Macklemore hand-me-downs, and Newt still remembers thinking _that, right there, is a man who knows how he’s been typecast._ Like an old person’s idea of old fashioned, so out-of-touch it’d come back into style.

So, yeah. He’d laughed. He’d also vowed to have Hermann’s dick in his mouth by the end of the day, and a ring on the man’s finger by the end of the year. At least one of those things had happened, which Newt figures isn’t too bad.

“It’s fifty percent,” says Hermann, anal math pedant. “Hardly something to brag about. And speaking of things not to brag about, you were a lousy fuck.”

Newt barks laughter. There’s too many years and psychic bonds between them for the remark to hurt. Besides: “ _Yeah. This is true.”_ He had been. Too young and too self-involved, too desperate to demonstrate his own awesomeness that he’d straight-up neglected to remind Hermann of his.

Hermann, for his part, had by that stage already decided casual fucking was the only sort of fucking he was ever going to get, care of one too many exes storming out screaming some variant of, “No wonder your dick’s so big, because a dick’s the only thing you are!” Thanks to the wonders of smartphone apps, he’d been well-versed in the one-night-stand prior to his tryst with Newt, meaning that Newt, despite his own lackluster sexual performance, had been more than happy with Hermann’s, and thus devastated to wake up to find the man gone and with no inclination whatsoever to return his texts. They didn’t speak for the next three years, not until Pentecost had reintroduced them to each other at the Shatterdome. Newt had been… cautiously optimistic, to put it mildly, until Hermann had looked him up and down, sniffed, snapped, “We’ve met,” and stormed off. Two days later, Newt had discovered Hermann had married. He’d subsequently spent that entire evening in his room, breaking his self-imposed sobriety in a pool of misery, vowing to hate Vanessa _Nott_ lieb (amirite?) until the day he died. That, as it turned out, had lasted exactly until he’d met the woman, and she’d spent the evening holding his hands on the Shatterdome roof and trying to give him tips on how not to get on Hermann’s bad side. Said tips hadn’t helped, but Newt blames his own terrible personality for that, not Vanessa’s good intentions. Hermann had also started fucking him again, which Newt had considered a very small plus in an otherwise entirely minus world.

“This is all going to come out, you know,” Hermann says. “The tabloids… they’re going to have a field day.”

They’d worried about this after the Breach, too, back in those few heady months of celebrity, back before the first outbreak of k-virus. There’d been a few uncomfortable questions at press conferences, but in the end the subject had been dropped. Saving the world had bought them some privacy, it seemed. Now, they know exactly how much.

“ _So what?”_ Newt asks. “ _Let it come out. I’m not ashamed. Are… are you?”_ The hesitation hits him a moment after the certainty, after the realization that, yeah. Maybe Hermann and Vanessa and, god, Lena have more to lose than he does, what with—

“No.” Hermann is vehement. “No. I’m not ashamed. As you say, we saved the world. We’re rockstars. After that, the least I’m owed is the privacy of who I love and how.”

Newt doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t even want to think it, but: “ _Lena…”_

“Lena loves you.” Hermann is having none of it. “Nothing anyone else says will change that. She loves you, and has three parents who adore her in turn. Many children—” Hermann’s voice breaks, just a little, and when he continues, his voice is… quieter. “Many children can’t say the same.”

Newt hasn’t had the quote-unquote “pleasure” of meeting Lars Gottlieb since his, ahem, transformation. Nonetheless, he certainly has a plan in mind should the situation so arise. It may involve Lars spending no small amount of time airborne. If anyone questions it, Newt’ll blame it on some kind of weird, previously unknown, kaiju pair-bond protection instinct. Oops, sorry Marshal. Won’t happen again I swear.

Hercules Hansen always was, not to put too crass a point on it, a family man. And it’s amazing what people can not see, when they put their minds to it.

The tablet in Hermann’s hands is still showing Vanessa, all bright smile and dark skin. She has a look in her eye, Newt thinks. It’s the look of a woman who knows _exactly_ what she’s doing.

“ _Everything will be okay,”_ he says, and believes it. “ _You’ll see.”_

* * *

A week later, the most popular theory is that one Doctor Newton Geiszler had to go into hiding after Hermann, jealous of his wife’s affairs with the man, hired a hit via mob boss Hannibal Chau. When Newt reads this, he laughs so hard he nearly barfs brain parasites all over the lab floor. Nearly. He manages to get himself under control enough to dig up an old biopsy from when he was human. He gives it to the skunkworks team. They’re the people rotated off the main floor when the stress of their shitty, awful world gets too much. Newt gives them the fun projects; the stuff that’ll be useful in a decade, or that they can patent now. The stuff that isn’t about kaiju or the Anteverse or viruses that turn people into monsters.

“I need an arm,” he tells them. “My arm. Doesn’t have to be transplantable, just enough to hold up to casual scrutiny.”

It takes them a week. The bones are printed on the 3D printer; plastic, but functional. The rest is just lab-grown muscle and skin.

“No arteries or nerves yet,” Doctor Nik says, unnecessarily apologetic. “Or hair. Or fingernails. Or… you get the idea. But we’re working on it.”

“It’s perfect,” Newt tells her, and means it.

He sends the arm to Zero, his Hong Kong tattoo artist (or, more accurately, Hermann’s tattoo artist). When it comes back, four days later, it looks almost exactly like Newt’s own left arm did, back when he was human. Newt paints fake little black nails on the ends of the fingers, just because, then bottles the whole mess up and presents it to Hannibal Chau.

Hannibal loves it. Within a day, blurry photos have appeared on disreputable websites, purporting to show Hannibal sitting in his office, the tattooed arm of Doctor Newton Geiszler floating in a preserving jar behind him. The UK tabloids who’d originally reported the hitman story, predictably, go nuts when they notice.

Zero, meanwhile, sends in a request for more cloned arms.

“Or any body parts, really,” she says, via an intermediary. “There’s only so much practice you can do on melons and pigskin.”

Hannibal senses a market for profit, so Newt leaves the project with the skunkworks. They’ll get the veins right eventually, he knows. Then tattoo artists won’t be the only people wanting cloned limbs.

* * *

Vanessa’s request comes in via Hannibal’s network, repeated by stern-faced people with large guns and interesting piercings. It makes Hermann anxious, but he’s never been one to deny his wife anything. Particularly not when it means he’ll get to see her again, albeit briefly and filtered through Newt’s multitude of eyes.

The swim to Singapore takes about a day, and Newt takes the opportunity to do some surveying of the local sea life. Things are still a toxic mess, but the ocean isn’t lifeless. Plenty of mollusks and crustaceans, trying to adapt to their ruined world, every one a tiny little fuck you to the Anteverse. The Kaiju War might’ve been the biggest biotic crisis since the last Ice Age, but life, in Newt’s experience, finds a way. It needs more than a few nukes and giant monsters to wipe it out.

Still. No one’s gonna be fishing in the Pacific for a few thousand years. Probably not a bad thing.

Hannibal has a van waiting for Newt when he slips out of the water and onto a dark, run-down dock that looks like every other dark, run-down dock in every other half-abandoned coastal city in the world. Singapore had been a beautiful place once, before the war. Newt never got to see it. Now, it’s a gutted ghost town, skyscrapers torn down and repurposed into Jaeger parts, their skeletal remains grasping the polluted sky.

Hannibal’s people have obviously been told what to expect, but they still give Newt The Look when he appears from the water. This is The Look he gets from people who are trying to play it cool, even as they scream inside their heads.

“Doctor Geiszler,” says a kid who can’t be out of his teens. “My name’s Ex. I’ll be your translator.” Ex looks like an escapee from a last-century cyberpunk film, but he signs as he talks and Newt like him immediately.

“Awesome, great to meet you. And call me Newt.”

Newt never got to see Singapore before the war and he doesn’t get to see it now, either. Not hidden in the back of Hannibal’s conspicuously inconspicuous van. Wherever they’re going, the drive takes about twenty minutes, in which Newt makes small-talk with Ex. The kid’s k-generation through-and-through, never known a world that wasn’t broken and toxic and under siege by hostile aliens from an incomprehensible dimension.

“You’ve seen the Anteverse?” he asks, all mad light in his iridescent red eyes. “Actually experienced it?”

“Seen, not been, yeah.”

“But, like. Properly? Not on vids?” They’ve got some footage, grainy and strange, sent back from Gipsy Danger. They’d tried to keep it classified, but it’d hit YouTube almost immediately. Urban legend is that watching it too much gets people obsessed. Allows the Anteverse into their heads. Of all the stupid urban legends to come out of the War, this is the one Newt can almost, _almost_ , believe.

He hesitates. “I have… memories of it,” he signs eventually. From the Drift, from the hive mind. He knows the chemical pain-stink of the air and the flesh-metal feel of the ground beneath his claws. Knows the infinite and unfathomable alien malice in the dead black eyes of the realm’s masters. The kaiju, designed to survive on Earth, are sane and comprehensible compared to the things that created them. And Newt? Newt likes to think of himself as open-minded and tolerant when it comes to aliens; he grew up watching _Star Trek_ and playing _Mass Effect_ like every other millennial. He’d like to think the Anteverse aliens they’ve encountered are some kind of colonizing minority, interstellar conquistadors. Wants to think there’s a whole bunch of angry young kids back on their home world, protesting the destruction of humanity and the cruelty of the kaiju factories. Wants to believe that, one day, Earth will be able to contact those rebels, petition for their support. Put a stop to this awful war the only way any war should ever be stopped; by diplomacy and treaty.

Newt wants to believe this. He desperately, desperately does. Believing it stops him thinking of the alternative.

“What’s it like?” Ex is asking. “Really like? The vids, man. I just… What _was_ all that stuff? It was— I swear. I’ve watched them like a million times and I just… It doesn’t make _sense_ , man.”

“Cruelty rarely does, dude,” Newt replies. “The Anteverse… It’s a battery farm for kaiju. It stinks like shit and pain and you can’t hear anything over the howls of million creatures going mad. I’m not sure what else you want me to tell you.”

This isn’t the answer Ex wants, and Newt can see it in the kid’s eyes. The expression—the disappointment melting into stubborn obsession—suddenly makes Newt feel a trillion years old and so tired he aches. He wonders whether this is how the Jaeger pilots felt whenever he used to try and talk to them about the kaiju. He wonders if having that epiphany makes him some kind of responsible adult.

“You… That can’t be all there is there,” Ex is saying. “The Anteverse… You wouldn’t go back, if you could? Explore it? It’s a whole other universe, man!”

“I… don’t know.” Newt’s answer surprises himself. “I’d go if they asked me, I guess. Not for a holiday.” His memories of it are kaiju-memories, prisoner memories. And he’s spent so long trying to keep this world, why would he leave it?

Four decades and Newt suddenly and intensely understands the expression _too old for this shit_. He wants to go back to teaching, wants tenure and citations, wants a project that doesn’t involve anyone or anything dying. He wants a house rather than a dorm room. Wants to watch Lena grow up and Hermann grow old, and grow old because he _is_ old, not because the stress is running him two years for every one. Mostly, Newt wants a _life_ , an actual human life, not this mad scramble between crises they’ve been enduring. He can’t even remember what it’s like to be on the outside, any more. What do people even _do_ when they’re not saving the world? Sit at cafés and talk about going to IKEA to buy a new end table for that spot in the hallway, you know the one, we can put the ugly vase your mother gave us last Christmas on it, so she can see next time she visits.

That’s the sort of thing normal people do, right? Newt tries to imagine himself in a café or an IKEA. Tries to imagine how he’d even fit. At Lena’s graduation? In the front row at her wedding, a dumb little bow tie glued onto his scales.

Maybe Ex is right. Maybe he should just take his chances in the Anteverse, do what he knows. Maybe he should but, fuck. He’s _tired_. He feels like he’s been tired for so long he doesn’t even remember what it’s like to be awake. Punk might not be dead, but it sure as hell could do with a little lie down.

The van stops in an underground parking lot identical to every other underground parking lot Newt’s ever been in. He gets out, then is shuffled into an elevator that can barely hold him, let alone his escort. When they emerge, it’s on the fourth floor of what looked to once have been a luxury hotel. Now, it’s abandoned and gutted. Maintained—so no cat piss, no graffiti—but certainly not in use. At least, not by anyone other than the stern-faced men and women, lining the walls with their black suits and SMGs.

There’s a set of doors ahead, cracked open and oozing bright light. From the far side, Newt hears:

“—mobsters, Vanessa! They have _guns_!”

“Oh, hush, darling. And don’t be rude.”

“No shoot is worth this. They’re gonna kill us! Someone’s going to find our bodies in the bay wearing cement pumps. I can’t wear cement, Vans! It doesn’t go with my complexion!”

Somewhere, a thousand miles away, Newt feels Hermann sit up and pay attention.

“ _Ready, dude?”_

Hermann is ready. He is so, so ready. So Newt makes his entrance, big and dramatic, walking on his hind legs, head nearly touching the ceiling, throwing open doors with his big arms.

Someone screams, high-pitched and shrieking but, more importantly, Vanessa says, “Newton!”

Then she’s surging forward, throwing herself into Newt’s arms. “Newt!” she exclaims. “Oh, Newt. Thank you, thank you so much, I… I hate to— but…?” She bites her lip, perfect and beautiful and ashamed.

Newt knows what she doesn’t want to ask, and nods. He steps back on his own mind, feels the strange rush as Hermann floods forward. Quite abruptly, Newt is sitting on the edge of their bed back at K2, body too small and skin too tight and leg aching. Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, Vanessa Gottlieb mutters “I love you” and “I got your flowers”, over and over, into her husband’s borrowed neck.

* * *

Reunions aside, they came here to work. Vanessa peels Giotto Singh off the floor, which lasts exactly as long as it takes him to say, “Vans? Where… where am I? I thought—” Then he catches sight of Newt, and the screaming starts again.

He faints twice more before he settles but, other than that, things go pretty well.

* * *

The spread comes out a week later, launched online. Within a twenty four hours, the images have been reprinted in every publication from _Vogue_ to _The Guardian_ to _WIRED_. There’s a lot of debate about Newt’s authenticity; Vanessa and Singh maintain he’s real, most of the “experts” claim it’s clever CG or even a puppet. Whole communities spring up online dedicated to finding “proof” one way or the other. Non-stop publicity, in other words; Vanessa and Singh the talk of every wherever-it-is-fashionistas-hang-out for months.

Surprisingly, Hermann’s favorite photo from the shoot is one of Vanessa, rocking it in one of Singh’s after-the-apocalypse themed casual outfits. She’s standing strong and proud in front of Newt, who’s hamming it up with a snarl behind her. They look like they’re about to go into battle for some kind of slightly crappy power metal band. Newt thinks it’s a little silly—his favorite is a much quieter shot, of Vans kissing his snout in profile—but Hermann nonetheless has it framed and hung above his desk.

“You’re both so strong,” he says, because he knows Newt’s curious. “It reminds me I need to be, also.”

Newt doesn’t mention he and Vans spent the entire shoot giggling and goofing off, much to Singh’s annoyance. He supposes that isn’t the point.

The point is that Vanessa’s new designer label, bREACH, has more press than it knows what to do with, particularly given it doesn’t yet have anything to sell. Any clothes, anyway, and when Newt comes into the lab one morning to find all his people standing in a huddle, smirking, he knows he’s into trouble.

“We ordered you one,” says Vi, mostly because Dr. Ng is giggling too hard. “They sold out their first run in a day!”

When Newt sees what’s they’re talking about, he laughs so hard it brings Hermann running, convinced Newt’s having some kind of seizure. When he sees what’s really going on, he groans, then stalks off with a, “It stays on _your_ side!”

“The profits go towards providing the k-vaccine to disadvantaged areas,” says Dr. Ng, stifling her giggles in the face of this important announcement.

The object in question is a plush kaiju doll. Very similar to the one Lena Gottlieb has of Slattern, almost suspiciously so; like it was designed by the same person. This one, however, very obviously depicts Newt, right down to the little glasses and lab coat and skinny black tie. It has the name “Dr. K” embroidered on the sole of its foot.

Dr. K spends a week sitting on the tank containing Aurora’s primary brain. Until the night it migrates to slumping over the top of Hermann’s monitor. He snorts when he sees it, but doesn’t send it back.

* * *

Singh sends Newt an email about two weeks after the shoot. The subject is _some ideas_. There’s no text in the body, just a bunch of images. They’re fashion school style sketches of Newt, dressed in a variety of outfits. Newt sends back opinions on his favorites. Just in case.

* * *

Hermann misses Lena’s birthday. His first reaction is to punch a wall so hard he cracks a metacarpal. His second is to dress in some of Newt’s old human clothes, then take six of Hannibal’s scariest looking bodyguards and vanish into the city for the day. All six of them come back so laden down by shopping bags they can barely walk.

“It doesn’t make up for anything,” Hermann says later. He’s sitting on the edge of their bed, surrounded by pink and chiffon and plush. His hair is spiked up and his sleeves are rolled back to show his tattoos and he looks _so much_ like Newt used to that it’s weirding Newt’s current self out.

“I can never make up for this.” Hermann has his elbows on his knees, is scowling over his steepled fingers. So, scratch looking like human Newt. He looks like _evil_ human Newt.

“ _She’ll understand,”_ Newt says.

“That’s not the point.”

Newt skyped with Lena earlier. She’d been happily showing him her presents—mostly gifts for school—and had asked after Daddy no less than fifteen times.

“ _This won’t be forever, dude,”_ Newt says, because he has no idea how else to diffuse Hermann’s anger. “ _You won’t miss another one.”_

“No,” Hermann says, teeth bared behind his fingers. “I won’t.”

* * *

Hermann is 99% certain the next A-origin outbreak is going to hit Cuiabá.

“ _Dude. That’s… are you sure?”_

They’re standing in front of a projection of the world, just the two of them. Hermann’s doing the scowling thing again. Nowadays, it seems like the only expression he can make.

“No,” he admits. “But the numbers are.” The numbers, Hermann’s model of the k-virus. A brand new war clock.

Newt would be the first person to admit he’s not great with geography. But he can read a map, and he can see that the blinking red dot showing the location of Cuiabá is located disturbingly inland.

The outbreaks have been getting further and further away from the Breach, away from the coast.

“They’re mapping our geography,” Hermann says.

“ _We’ve started seeing some pretty weird behavior patterns in the infected,”_ Newt admits. “ _Particularly bats and birds. They fly and fly and fly for miles. Until they, splat. Disintegrate mid-air.”_

“Insects?” Hermann asks. Because, yeah. Malaria-variant k-virus. That’s just what they need.

“ _Hard to tell. A few strains, maybe? But we’ve never found an obvious live case.”_ Newt adamantly refuses to infect live animals with k-virus in the lab. He’s done some mad science in his day, but he has _ethics_ , damnit.

“We need to get the vaccine out there. K8.”

“ _Shit. We don’t have spectrum for that.”_ Not enough variants. They’ll be down to administering multiple shots for what they can fight, and hoping and praying for the rest.

“It’s better than nothing,” Hermann points out. Newt tries not to feel like the last decade didn’t happen.

* * *

They get Vans’ charity involved, hiding their names behind a fake think tank set up for exactly that. (Well. That and money laundering.)

Vans’ people do great, as usual, and the PPDC is useless, also as usual. They drag some suit out from the (ahem) “Shatterdome” in New York; the one that’s really just an office block full of bureaucrats who’ve never seen a functional Jaeger, let alone a kaiju. Mr. Asshole Suit Guy makes a statement denying that the k-virus outbreaks can be modeled.

“Our own researchers have spent years on the same problem,” he says. “To no avail. These are the same brilliant minds who allowed us to predict, often down to the very second, the openings of the Challenger Deep Breach. If there was a pattern to be found in these outbreaks, they would have found it.”

Newt growls at the screen. “‘ _Minds’,”_ he says. “‘ _They’. As if there was more than one of you!”_

“He’s talking about you, you idiot,” Hermann points out.

Newt huffs. “ _No he’s not. But… whatever. Even if he is, as if being called ‘brilliant’ is some kind of compliment, coming from that asshole.”_

“Newton, you’ve never met the man. He may be perfectly—”

“—well-meaning but misguided charities would do better to put their efforts to supporting our formal efforts against the k-virus, not wasting their time on stunts and half-naked C-list celebrities.”

The sound of Hermann’s pencil snapping between his fingers is very, very loud.

Newt grins, sharp and vicious. “ _See?”_ he says. “ _Asshole.”_

This time, Hermann doesn’t disagree.

* * *

As it turns out, Hermann’s model is wrong… by about twelve hours and five kilometers. When the death toll hits five figures, it really stops mattering.

It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been much, much worse. Three quarters of a million dollars and they’d managed to get nearly two hundred thousand doses of vaccine into the region. The PPDC might be assholes, but there are plenty of other NGOs out there happy to help with the logistics.

Once the bodies clear, the real massacre starts; this one of the media versus the PPDC. Asshole Suit Guy is suddenly on every channel, deflecting questions like Wonder Woman deflecting bullets. _Why did the PPDC ignore warnings of this outbreak? Is it true you’ve recently lost key members of the former K-Science division to the private sector? What do you say to allegations of the PPDC planning Jaeger deployments against non-kaiju targets?_

“One lucky guess is not a predictive model,” Asshole Suit Guy says. “Otherwise we may as well fire the whole of K-Science and hire Paul the Octopus to predict outbreaks.” One of the reporters points out Paul the Octopus has been dead for twenty years, and Asshole Suit Guy just smiles and let’s the comment ooze off him like napalm from a daikaiju’s hide.

* * *

The second outbreak is a month later. This time, Hermann predicts it down to the second, if not the kilometer. The people of Alice Springs line up around the (hot, red, dusty) block to get their vaccinations.

“Didn’t hurt those girls in England,” a woman tells a news reporter, brow creased and scowling beneath the sun. “Better safe than sorry.”

The outbreak is K8N2. It uses dogs as a carrier, and for a week the news is non-stop reports of tough-looking men in muscle shirts weeping over the euthanized bodies of an endless parade of pit bulls and Staffordshire terriers and kelpies and blue heelers. Newt thinks of Herc Hansen and of Max, now nearly four years gone. The Marshal lost his dog and lost his son, and now the people of Alice Springs are doing half the same.

The canine death toll is nearly a hundred percent. The human death toll is six. Total. Two infants, one cancer patient, three people in their nineties. All people ineligible for the vaccine, for one reason or other. Alice Spring mourns, but it’s still a victory, of a sort; the least fatal outbreak of k-virus so far.

“What happened in the Northern Territory has shown the world this scourge _can_ be beaten,” says the Australian Minister for Health. “We can survive. We will survive. Together, as a nation, as a species, as a planet.” Then she makes the big announcement; from now on, all k-vaccines will be free for every Australian citizen, funded by their public healthcare system. It’s the first time a world government has done such a thing, and Newt gives a little bark of victory, fist pumping the air. The television shows the Minister meeting with Vanessa, there as an ambassador for Barrier. Vans presents the woman with a little Dr. K doll, and they pose for photographs while Hermann scoffs. Despite the sneer, Newt can feel the pride building in Hermann’s chest, swelling big enough to burst.

* * *

They predict the third outbreak in Chiang Rai, too. It doesn’t go as well as the one in Alice, but twelve hundred dead is better than twelve thousand.

“ _There,”_ Newt tells Hermann. “ _Let the PPDC deny we know what we’re fucking doing now.”_

“Our enemies will retaliate,” Hermann says. “Now we’ve made it clear we know what they’re doing.”

Sure enough, the counterstrike comes less than a day later. They get forewarning about thanks to the Marshal. By the time Newt and Hermann make it to Hannibal’s office, Hansen is slamming scotch like water and saying, “I tried to bloody stop them. I swear to god I tried.”

Asshole Suit Guy is on the television again. He’s saying:

“—believe that these outbreaks are not, as previously thought, extraterrestrial in origin. Instead, we have intelligence that shows they are originating from Earth. That terrorist factions on this very planet are developing a bio weapon to use against its people. Moreover, we have reason to believe this organization, headed by this man—” A photo projects into the wall behind him. A mug shot, outdated now but still very obviously Hannibal Chau.

“ _Motherfuckers!”_ shouts Newt. It comes out as a startled growl, but he figures everyone gets the gist.

Hannibal, meanwhile, says nothing. Just, very calmly, pulls a pistol from his jacket and empties the clip into the screen.

* * *

“This is Hell,” Hannibal told Newt once. “My Hell. I bet my soul, you see. When the kaiju first came. Bet that the world was gonna end anyway, figured the only thing left was to go down in style.

“Turns out I lost that bet. The world didn’t end, and the Devil sent one of his own to collect. When I cut my way out of the belly of that beast I knew I’d died, knew what I had to do. Never let it be said, kid, that Hannibal Chau is a man who doesn’t pay back what he owes.”

The thing is, Newt is almost certain he knows how Hannibal managed to survive inside the belly of Baby Otachi. It’s weird science but it works, kinda. More than “the Devil brought me back to life to enact an ironic punishment wherein I spend my life trying to help the planet I once gave up on”, anyway.

Maybe.

* * *

They were ready for it, because of course they were. They’re geniuses, they’re rockstars. If they can beat incomprehensible, trillion-year-old aliens from an alternate reality, they can beat some dickhole secret paramilitary organization, too.

The reporter’s name is Taylor. He works for _WIRED_ and is the only human Newt’s met so far that he has to look up at when standing on all fours. Vanessa spent months vetting reporters and publications and, in the end, chose Taylor because he was the only guy who honestly seemed more interested in the science and the politics than in their sex lives. This is only the second time Newt’s met the guy face-to-face (or face-to-collarbones because, fuck this dude is tall), although they’ve skyped and emailed on and off for the last few months.

“Doctor Geiszler,” says Taylor, holding out his hand when Newt appears. “Ready for your Snowden moment?”

Newt takes the proffered handshake. “Born ready, dude,” he lies. His translator dutifully repeats what he’s said out loud, making it sound a lot more confident than Newt feels. “Herms and Vans are on their way. They just… have some catching up to do.”

Taylor gives a kind little smirk. “I’ll bet,” he says. “When’s the ‘divorce’?” He makes air quotes on the word.

“Next month.” They’ve dragged it out as long as they can, but it’s starting to look suspicious. Almost like, shockingly, the participants don’t want it to happen.

“Tight deadline,” Taylor says.

Newt shrugs. “If it goes through, we’ll just get to have another wedding. I love weddings. I’ll polish up my scales all special.”

Taylor gives him a calculating look. “How does Doctor Gottlieb feel about that? Another wedding?”

“Why, dude? Gonna put it in your article?”

“Maybe.”

Newt huffs laughter, but doesn’t give an answer. Truthfully, Hermann’s… resigned, is probably the best word for it. He’s done grief, he’s done anger. Now he just wants it over.

Giotto Singh is the next to arrive, barreling into the room at the head of a train of people carrying cameras and lighting rigs and giant foil umbrellas. Singh is a fashion designer now, but he was a photographer first.

“Newton, darling! You look _glowing_!”

“Hey dude.” Newt accepts kisses beneath his eyes from Singh, who then proceeds to inspect his scales and eyes and dorsal plates, cooing and tutting by turns. Once they’d gotten over the whole fainting phase, Gi had proclaimed Newt to be “his muse”, and declared it his personal life mission to keep Newt polished and perfect.

After all, _everyone_ did glamor for humans. Only Giotto Singh did glamor for kaiju.

Gi is busy posing Newt and yelling at harried staff over the lighting profile when the door opens a final time, and the Gottliebs walk in.

“—were all like ‘ee-ee-ee-ew’ but I was like ‘co-oo-oo-ol’ and Ms. Megan wouldn’t let us used the scalpels without supervision but I’m like ‘mi-ii-ii-iss I kno-oo-oo-ow how to use a scalpel! Papa taught me’ who doesn’t know how to use a scalpel? I told her I got to help dissect Scunner’s pituitary gland and she told me it wasn’t nice to lie but Daddy I wasn’t lying I swear Papa let me make the incision into the diaphragma sellae he said I did really well, Papa! I did, didn’t I? I did really well?”

Newt disentangles himself from Gi’s lighting, ambling over to where Lena Gottlieb is grasping her father’s free hand in both of her own. From Hermann’s expression—slightly dazed and incredibly happy—she’s been talking non-stop since she arrived.

“You did great, Monster Girl,” Newt tells her, coming close so she can scamper into his big arms and he can lift her up to her father’s line of sight. Hermann hasn’t been able to pick up his baby girl since she was an infant, but Newt can, and he hears the sigh and feels the rush of _presence_ in his mind as Hermann lives the experience with him.

“Lena’s advanced science class dissected frogs,” Vanessa explains, coming forward for her own kiss and hug and greeting.

“I don’t know why she couldn’t be interested in a real science,” Hermann quips, “like physics.” But he’s smiling, hand ruffling Lena’s hair as she clings against his neck.

“I like physics!” Lena announces, scandalized. “We made Faraday cages and tracked the orbit of Jupiter’s moons.”

“Ah!” says Hermann. “Real science, you see.” He’s talking to Newt, who sticks out his tongue in response. Hermann just laughs, happy for the first time in months, and rubs his nose against his daughter’s while she giggles. Somewhere, in the background, Gi snaps photographs while Taylor taps notes into a tablet.


	4. Kaiju: Final Wars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _[The future teaches you to be alone, the present to be afraid and cold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX8szNPgrEs)._

The article runs one day before the divorce is scheduled to go through. Titled _Kaiju: Final Wars_ , it takes up an entire issue, a forty thousand word essay wrapped around shifting photographs and interactive multimedia demonstrations. Newt and Hermann and Vanessa all read it together. They’re huddled in a gazebo on the roof garden of Hannibal’s compound, Lena playing happily with an enormous, scar-faced bodyguard just beyond.

The article starts with a narrative of the close of the Breach, under the heading “Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse” There are snippets from interviews with Tendo and Mako and Hansen, an interactive map of LOCCENT, a 3D model of the Breach that prompts a “ _that’s_ not right” from Hermann, a model of Slattern that prompts the same from Newt, footage of the final battles, an artist’s (blessedly incorrect) reconstruction of the Anteverse. The narrative is told as if the reader is there, experiencing the panic as it happens, a running war clock ticking at the bottom of the screen. Right up until the point where the Breach closes, and the clock stops, and scrolls off the screen.

There’s a photo of Newt and Hermann beneath it, as they were at the end; battered and bloodied and so, so painfully _young_. Three feet from death and happy, with themselves and each other and the world. The next section, “Fortune favors the brave, dude”, is a combined bio on each of them; early life, school, how they met, their time at the PPDC. The section introduces Vanessa, has a non-sensationalist sidebar about polyamory and open relationships. There are photos from their lives, childhoods combining into couples combining into a trio, then a little bit on Lena. It’s all very understated, very matter-of-fact. Very _kind_. There’s a quote from Hermann, _We saved the world. The least we’re owed in return is the privacy of our happiness._ Vanessa starts sniffing a little, tearing up as her hand winds into her husband’s and they shift closer, cuddling against each other and into Newt’s side.

The section ends with a photo of the four of them, taken just after Lena was born, just before the first outbreak of k-virus. They look so bright and so hopeful it makes Newt’s hearts hurt. He suspects that’s the point. Particularly as they keep scrolling, and the photo remains, hanging in the centre of the screen before being consumed by oozing blue rot, revealing the next heading: “Something out there discovered us”.

It’s about the k-virus, about the first outbreak. There are photos and videos, graphic and brutal and hidden behind warning screen after warning screen. Effects from the k-virus most people would never have seen. The discussion of how it works, what it does, is frank and unflinching and easy to follow. It’s interspersed with specifics about the micro-Breaches, about Newt’s work on the vaccine and Hermann’s on the h-fields and his failure to predict the outbreaks in the way he could predict the daikaiju. There’s another interactive model, this one of the h-fields force-closing a Breach. Then, finally, a discussion on the k-vaccine.

The section ends with a photo of Newt, how he used to be. He remembers when it was taken; for the cover of _Rolling Stone_ , not long after VK-DAY. His fifteen minutes of legit rockstardom. It’s a very _Rolling Stone_ cover; a bust portrait of a shirtless Newt, tongue out, hands raised and throwing horns to the viewer, tattoos on display. He’s got it framed somewhere, probably in storage back at the ‘Dome.

Here, in this article, the image dissolves into an excerpt from one of Newt’s papers, the text talking about the k-virus. Specifically the hypothetical end state, of a human-kaiju hybrid. The title for the next section pops up above it: “Whatever happened to Newton Geiszler?”

This part talks about his “disappearance”, the Nobel, the papers he’s published, his two new doctorates, his continued work on the vaccine. There are interviews with the people he’s interacted with over the last few years, mostly in academia, and a lot of “no comment” comments from the PPDC. Next comes the conspiracy theories, screenshots of websites and excerpts from salacious articles, including the most recent headlines about Hannibal Chau.

The section ends in gonzo style from Taylor:

_I’ve been in contact with Geiszler for three months before he agrees to meet in person, in an undisclosed home in Manilla. He’s fifteen minutes late and I’m ten minutes early, so I spend the downtime reviewing the images I’ve already been sent. “I hate it when people scream,” he’d told me, and I promise myself I won’t be that guy. I want to be ready._

_I’m not._

Then more text from the paper about the k-virus. This time, it dissolves into a photo taken more recently, by Giotto. It’s a recreation of the _Rolling Stone_ cover but, this time, Newt looks very, very different. The photo fades to black on a scroll, and a video loads. It’s Newt, filmed in K2. Subtitles come up on screen as he signs and gives a tour: _Hey everyone. It’s me, Doctor Newton Geiszler. As you can see, I’m not dead. Just… different. A few extra limbs doesn’t stop me doing my work, though, so welcome to my lab. This is where the magic happens._

The lab tour is extensive, Newt showing off equipment and specimens and, _This is The Line between my side of the lab and Doctor Gottlieb’s. We’ve had The Line pretty much since, like, our second week working together? I think? Something like that. Anyway, didn’t see a reason not to keep it! It keeps all his sharp physicists and engineers away from my squishy biologists and chemists. We’re each working with team of about thirty_ , and so on and so forth. The clip ends with Newt playing a cover of “Weird Science” on his keyboards.

“The First Kaijin” is, unsurprisingly, about Newt. About contracting the k-virus, developing the vaccine. About saving everyone except himself. It’s about his time in hiding in the Shatterdome and it’s about Hermann and Vanessa and Lena, too. There are photos of the four of them, together as a family. One of Lena and Newt that nearly makes Hermann cry when he sees it. The section ends with an image of Lena’s, drawn at school, of everyone holding hands above the words MY FAMILY written with a child’s naive letters.

The next section is “The Secret War”, and it talks about the k-virus again. About Hermann’s problems predicting the outbreaks. There’s another interactive map, showing the locations and strains and casualty rates. Some of Hermann’s earlier models and the outbreaks that broke them. The text starts talking about the increasing militarization on the PPDC, about the rise of blocs and factions, country against country squabbling over patents and Jaeger tech. The endless export treaties that have held up the Mark-7s, countries suddenly unwilling to share technology in the wake of the Breach’s closure. It talks about the split in K-Science, the founding of EBERL and politics behind K-Lab’s refusal—i.e. Newt and Hermann’s refusal—to integrate.

There’s a quote from Hermann:

“ _EBERL has never attempted to model outbreaks,” Doctor Gottlieb tells me. “And has never invested in making h-field technologies more accessible, or into improving the k-vaccine. Billions of dollars, and they pour it into the Jaeger. Into weapons designed to combat yesterday’s enemies.”_

_I ask him if he thinks we’ve seen the last of the daikaiju. He waves a hand at the question, obviously irritated. “That isn’t the point. The point is predictions, vaccines, h-fields… These technologies have only defensive uses. They are to save lives, not take them. But the Jaeger? The Jaeger are weapons. That we have, in past, pointed them solely at daikaiju does not mean we will always do so.” I ask him if he’s talking about countries using Jaeger tech against each other offensively. His reply: “I joined the PPDC to save the world from giant monsters. Not to satisfy the lusts of Earth-bound warlords.”_

There’s more. A whole section of investigative journalism that hasn’t come from Newt or Hermann, must be from Taylor chasing his own sources. If at least one of those sources doesn’t end in “sen” and start with “Han”, Newt will be surprised. (Other leading suspects: “ko, Ma”, “do, Ten”, “ket, Bec”. All the old guard, in other words. Whatever’s left of them.) The text confirms what they’ve long suspected; that the PPDC is leaking like a Mark-1, infiltrated by organizations with less altruistic motives that the preservation of the planet.

“What are the kaiju?” revisits the biology of the kaiju, with more interactive models and diagrams. It talks about the Anteverse and the hive mind, and it talks about Newt, too. There’s a model of his anatomy as well—albeit minus a few key pieces—plus speculation on his function. Then the obvious conclusion:

_If the daikaiju are the biotech equivalent of our mechanical Jaeger, then the k-virus is nothing less than an attempt to turn every living thing on our planet into a walking weapon. In the hands of the Anteverse, such a technology spells annihilation for our species. In the hands of militant factions on Earth, it could be the start of something worse._

“Numbers do not lie” starts with an on-the-ground account of the outbreak in Guìyáng. It talks about the vector bats, and it talks about the chicken. A quote from Newt: _That’s when we knew we were fucked._

Hermann’s maps and models make a reappearance, this time with the separation of A-origin and E-origin outbreaks. Hermann again:

“ _A-origin we can predict. The Anteverse is many things, including highly unimaginative. And they’ve never, ever repeated a strain. The pure E-origin outbreaks were polluting our data. Once we knew how to remove them, we knew how to build a model for the A-origins just as accurate as the one used to predict the daikaiju.”_

_I ask if its possible to build something similar for the A-origin outbreaks. Gottlieb looks at me with an expression that, for the first time, shows every decade he’s devoted to fighting this war._

“ _We can model the Anteverse,” he tells me. “The hive mind has a level of uniformity to it that lends itself well to statistical analysis. But the E-origin outbreaks? If I could model something like that, I wouldn’t need to work for the Corps. I’d be the wealthiest man on the planet, would predict the stock market and produce films and retire to an island in the middle of the Atlantic, as far away from this mess as possible.”_

_Even as he says it, we both know it’s a lie. Gottlieb can no more abandon this crusade than any other revolutionary could abandon theirs. One thing is true, however. For all his genius, Gottlieb still cannot use mathematics to model human behavior. Because that’s the catch, the terrible secret: at least a third of the Earth’s k-virus attacks are coming from inside the house. The “E” in “E-origin” stands for Earth._

_These are attacks the human race is launching against itself._

The next section is “Slouching towards Gehenna”, and it opens with Newt:

“ _We don’t care who’s doing it,” Geiszler tells me. “I mean, they’re shitlords and they deserve everything that’s coming to them. But us, me and Hermann? We’re the science crew. We stop the virus. Someone else can find out where it’s coming from. Find out, and do what needs to be done.”_

_Geiszler’s a pacifist by politics, as he tells me repeatedly. But when he talks about the E-origin outbreaks, it’s obvious he’s questioning the philosophy._

_There's something unsettling about being within arm's reach of an angry kaiju, even one the size of Geiszler. The armored plates on his back hike up, a sort of a cross between a shark's fin and a dog's hackles, and ripples of glowing kaiju blue pulse across his flanks. Geiszler has every reason to be angry. For him, the weaponization of the k-virus doesn't just represent a perversion of his life's work. It's a personal threat, as well._

There's an account of Newt's kidnapping, of Hermann's near death. It's an edited account, but the threat is clear.

_"There never was a divorce," Vanessa Gottlieb tells me. "I love my husband, Lena loves her father. But the sort of people who would do something like this [orchestrate the k-virus outbreaks], we couldn't imagine they would balk at hurting me, or hurting Lena, if they thought they could use us against Hermann or Newt. So we faked it." For a given value of faked; the papers were real, the intent behind them was not._

_"We didn't know what else to do." Gottlieb's hand is linked with his wife's. This is the first time they've seen each other in nearly a year, and it shows; they orbit each other as tightly as Drift partners. "In the end, this was all we could think to do. Doctor Geiszler and I, we believe in the PPDC. But people have to know the truth. And…" He looks aside, obviously anxious. "And, this way, if something happens to any of us, everyone will know why."_

_"They're trying to make more of me.” Geiszler's explanation of the "why" is as straightforward as it is unsettling. "At the moment, the k-virus kills everything it infects. Everything except me. The dickholes responsible for the E-outbreaks, they're trying to figure out why I'm special, and they're trying to replicate it. They're trying to build their own kaiju armies. At the moment, they're racing the Anteverse to see who gets to destroy the human race the fastest."_

* * *

Taylor wins a Pulitzer, although that doesn't happen until later. What happens first is that, roughly three hours after the report goes live—while the first lot of people are still partway through—another outbreak hits Blagoveshchensk.

It takes about a day for samples to arrived in K2, by which time _WIRED_ ’s website has gone down five times due to the influx of traffic. _Final Wars_ becomes single the most visited news article in the history of the internet; the bastard offspring of Watergate and K-DAY. It gets worse after Newt confirms the Blagoveshchensk outbreak as E-origin. Pure E-origin.

They have a press conference, via Skype, because there now doesn’t seem to be a reason not to. Newt stands in front of the camera, Hermann just behind it, doing voice over while Newt signs. It takes them three takes to get the rhythm right but, when they do, the effect is uncanny: Hermann stepped back in his own mind, Newt using his voice to speak, Hermann’s voice but Newt’s accent and words and intonation.

Newt explains about the outbreak, explains how they know it’s E-origin, pleads with people to get vaccinated.

“We beat smallpox,” he tells the camera. “We beat the daikaiju. The k-virus is the shitty crossover movie version of both and we can beat it, too. Rotten Tomatoes the shit outta it, make sure the director never works again.”

They take questions. “ _Only_ about the outbreak,” Newt stresses, apparently pointlessly. At least half the questions are about his personal life, about Hermann and Vanessa and Lena.

“Fair warning,” Newt says, watching lines and lines of gossip scroll through his chat log. “We’re talking here about a bioterrorism incident that looks to claim, conservatively, hundreds if not thousands of lives. The next person who asks about who I’m dicking tonight gets their news agency fucking banned from the chatroom. Also, incidentally, the answer is ‘no one’ because I’ll be working, trying to save some fucking lives.”

They have to kick out three reporters, but everyone else gets the hint after that.

* * *

The final death toll in Blagoveshchensk is about seventy. Newt’s surprised it’s so low but, as it turns out, the Russian government has been quietly and aggressively quashing any resistance to the k-vaccine while the rest of the world was panicking about growing scales.

 _“I wonder if they know something we don’t?”_ he asks Hermann.

This earns him an incredulous look over a pair of ugly old-fashioned hipster glasses. “What? That a hostile international force is launching bioterrorism attacks against civilian populations? And that the vest way to combat this threat is to take advantage of a number of readily accessible, internationally funded vaccination programs?”

“ _Touché.”_

There’s a pause. They’re still in Hannibal’s compound—still in their mafia-don style exile—relaxing in the pool, Vanessa and Lena doing summersaults in the water a few meters away. The pool’s too shallow for Newt to join in, Hermann can’t fold his body up tight enough. So they just watch, enjoying the sound of Lena’s gleeful shrieking and the way water beads and slides down Vanessa’s silk-sepia skin.

“I have a list,” Hermann eventually says. “Of countries that have not been impacted by an E-origin k-virus outbreak.”

“ _So do a lot of people, now,”_ Newt says. “ _I bet it’s a long list.”_ He’s not trying to shit on whatever Hermann’s doing, just give the man an opening to add:

“Yes. But mine incorporates… other variables.”

“ _The sort of people who’d do something like this, who’s to say they wouldn’t target their own population?”_

“As I said. I’ve incorporated other variables.”

Newt’s claws twitch, and he feels the growl in the back of his throat.

* * *

The PPDC practically implodes. The news channels are just endless feeds of Corps officials being paraded up in front of courts and committees, stammering and stuttering and pointing fingers and shifting blame. That’s the stuff they put on for show. The real culling comes internally, people getting thrown out and moved on. For all that they’re the cause of it, Newt and Hermann barely see it happening, other than the occasional visit from Hansen to let them know how things are progressing.

Well, by all accounts. There are two more outbreaks, in Colombia and South Korea, but Hermann’s model predicts them and, near as anyone can tell, they’re pure A-origin.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Hermann tells yet another chatroom full of reporters at yet another press conference. “The enemies of humanity can no longer operate in shadow, and so they chose to operate not at all. They are cowards.”

“I hope their floors are covered in Lego, their furniture is made of hard corners, their lights don’t work, and their shoes are nowhere to be found,” is Newt’s opinion.

They have about a month with Lena and Vanessa in Hong Kong before Hannibal deems it safe enough for them to return to the UK. It’s probably just as well. Vanessa and Hermann are deeply in love, but their relationship is also built around seeing each other in infrequent, passionate, doses. Another month of living in each other’s pockets may have turned their fake divorce into the real thing, even if Vanessa spends most of her time distracted by bREACH and Skin2Save. The launch for the former is steamrolling almost faster than Giotto can keep up. The latter sends its models out to Hong Kong for a photo op with Newt. Getting fawned over by lingerie models for a day is not, in Newt’s opinion, the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. One called Sarah keeps running her hand across the scales on his arm, making cooing noises of approval, much to Hermann’s irritation.

Extracting Lena is more difficult. She loves Hong Kong. Not to mention Newt seems to have been officially ditched as family favorite and replaced with Hannibal Chau, and he’s not sure whether to find it endearing or alarming when Lena starts dressing in red and gold and wielding a comb like a balisong. Hermann’s opinion of, “At least it’s not biology” is, in Newt’s opinion, not parentally appropriate.

* * *

Three days after they send the girls home, they’re summoned into Hannibal’s office to find him pointing a gun at the head of Asshole Suit Guy.

“I owe this dickshit a bullet to the skull,” Hannibal says, smooth and conversational, “but he says he wants to talk to you two, first.”

In the end, Hannibal does not get to shoot Asshole Suit Guy, whose name turns out to be Anderson. (Newt ends every sentence he addresses to the man with “Mister Aa-aa-aa-anders-ss-son”, a verbal tic Hermann does not pass on. Prissy uptight killjoy that he is.)

“I’m here to extend an apology on behalf of the PPDC,” he says, very much trying to look like the sort of man who does not currently have an MP7 muzzle-fucking his ear.

“That’s a real shame, that is,” says Hannibal, who very, very much wants to shoot the guy.

“We, um. There will be an announcement tonight,” Anderson continues. “EBERL is being disbanded. In light of recent… recent investigations, the PPDC feels this course of action would be the most, ah. The most wise.”

“ _You mean the whole lab was as rotten as a three-week-old kaiju corpse,”_ Newt has Hermann relay. “ _And entirely less scientifically useful. Just like we’ve been saying for years.”_ ( _“Mister Anderson,”_ is added, but not spoken aloud, q.v. uptight killjoy.)

“The PPDC will admit to making some… unwise partnerships in the wake of the Breach’s closure,” Anderson says. “I can assure you these are undergoing a comprehensive internal review.” Newt, Hermann, and Hannibal all scoff in unison. Anderson at least has the decency to look alarmed by the reaction. “In the interim,” he adds quickly, “We, uh. The PPDC finds itself entirely without a research division.”

Hermann grins. The expression is razor-sharp and, if Anderson’s expression is anything to go by, even more terrifying than the threat of painting the walls with his substantia grisea.

“I think you’ll find,” Hermann says, “that you aren’t _entirely_ without a research division, are you?” A beat. “ _Mister Anderson_.”

Newt gives a barking whoop, and lets Hannibal and Hermann work out the details.

* * *

The end up splitting K2 down the center. Hannibal keeps the civilian-commercial arm, everything about the breach and the k-virus goes back to the PPDC. None of the K2 lab staff move permanently over—apparently, Hannibal pays better—but about twenty end up with Hermann and Newt at the Shatterdome as contractors. There’s a whole bunch of paperwork and debriefings about conflict of interest this and public-private partnership that and export restrictions and teaming agreements that Newt basically tunes out of. He’s too busy getting high fives from Tendo and hugs from Mako and awkward back-pats from Becket and Larson.

“ _We’re back, baby!”_ Newt whoops, all four fists in the air, as they step into the Shatterdome for the first time in nearly a year.

“I will miss the private jacuzzi,” Hermann confesses.

“ _People in our lab again, though,”_ Newt says. “ _It’s gonna be like old times._ Old _old times.”_ Very old. K-Lab’s just been the two of them for, like, a decade. Though Newt supposes they aren’t K-Lab anymore; with EBERL gone, they’re just plain ol’ K-Science again, no further distinctions necessary.

“People, but no money,” Hermann points out. Apparently EBERL’s seemingly endless pools of funding came from some of Anderson’s politely termed “unwise partnerships”.

“ _We’ve done more with less, dude,”_ Newt points out. “ _We saved the entire world once with a pile of garbage.”_

Hermann huffs. “It was a little more than just that—”

“ _Dude. That’s, like, the nicest thing you’ve ever—”_

“—given there were also four Jaeger, two dead kaiju, and a mob lord involved.”

“ _Oh, no wait. There it is. I love you too, you prissy asshole.”_

Hermann doesn’t say anything, but Newt can feel the flood of fondness that flushes through him. Fondness and something else, a kind of chest-aching nostalgia. And Newt gets it, he totally does. Bickering in the Shatterdome on the way back to their lab, catching a few quiet moments in between saving the world. Same as it’s been for nearly all their adult lives and—

A though occurs, so brutal and sudden that it stops Newt dead. Hermann gets two more steps before he notices, turning with a, “Newton?”

“ _Dude,”_ Newt says. “ _Dude. Oh my god. We have_ staff _now.”_

This earns his a raised eyebrow and a pinched expression. “I was under the impression that was the point, yes.”

“ _Dude.”_ Newt’s sure his eyes are very bright, his dorsal plates raised in alarm. “ _Dude._ People _. In the_ lab _.”_

“Yes? Newton, I—”

“ _The lab we have_ sex _in. Like, a_ lot _.”_

Hermann has his mouth open, finger raised, like he’s about to argue. He freezes, closes his mouth, opens it again, closes it again, then:

“When… when do the transfers get here?”

“ _Tomorrow.”_

“Right. Well. Um. Perhaps, this evening. We could, ah”—a quick glance around, to make sure they’re alone—“have one final, um. Experience. For old time’s sake.”

Newt nods, very enthusiastically. “ _Fuck, dude. It’s like you can read my mind or something.”_

“Quite. And then, perhaps, there are some, ah. Items that will require… relocation. To a more… appropriate position.”

“ _Fuck, yeah. Position. Gotcha. You and me, Herms. You and me.”_

“Indeed.”

When they start walking again, the pace is… slightly more hurried. Slightly.

It’s only when they get to the lab and start looking in the, ahem, usual places, that Newt gets a horrible, sinking feeling.

“ _Um, Herms?”_

“Mmm?”

“ _Like. Don’t freak out—”_

“What?”

_“—but I think someone’s cleaned the lab already.”_

Hermann just buries his face in his hands, and groans.

Somewhere, outside, the apocalypse shuffles closer.


End file.
